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REFLECTIONS 


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■—FROM MY— 


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BOOK 



BALTIMORE: 

PRINTED BY JOHN B. PIET 
174 W. Baltimore Street. 

1879 





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Press of Jonx B. Piet, Baltimore, Md. 



DEDICATED TO 

GENERAL WILLIAM B. BATE. 




* 




















PREFACE. 


The following are the observations of others, jotted 
down or remembered, and reflections that motives of 
regard have induced me to make for the instruction of 
the young people of my family. These observations are 
taken from my Note Book, and were jotted down in 
different moods of reading and reflection; some with 
references, some with quotation marks only, and some 
appear to be my reflections mixed up with the obser¬ 
vations of others. 

This publication is confined to the young friends for 
whose instruction it is intended, and is submitted to 
them as a sort of task, for revision, by investigation 
and reflection, into more perfect forms, for impressing 
on their minds, truths that shall renew us for the 
society of the Creator and for correspondences that had 
been lost and regained. 







INTRODUCTION. 


It was observed by the Stoic “ that no ethical sub¬ 
ject can be rightly apprehended except from a precon¬ 
sideration of entire nature and the ordering of the 
whole,” and the justice of this observation is approved 
by historians, moralists, statesmen, jurists and scien¬ 
tists, who seek to establish their principles by their 
universality and by their conformity to the laws of the 
Creator. These laws are universal and unchangeable ; 
but the Creator gave man dominion over the products 
of nature, and his free will was exercised to 11 keep ” 
and u dress ” them as of a garden for His society, and 
for nourishment, except of the tree of knowledge, which 
was forbidden. By disobedience, the free will of man 
was cast out from nature’s perfect forms of correspon¬ 
dence with the Creator, to exercise the knowledge 
derived from nature, in her perverted forms of waste 
and death. 

To raise up man, God gave him reason to discover 
Id is laws, and, by infinite appliances to perfect his 
social nature and natural productions, and restore their 
correspondence with His laws. 

He also established His kingdom with universal 
relations, to instruct reason and perfect its appliances 
for universal correspondence between the free will of 
man and the laws of the Creator, and to perfect the 
knowledge of nature in the worship of God. 



INTRODUCTION. 


This kingdom reveals the essential force or nature 
of things implanted in them by the Creator for the 
development of the perfect social man in His image 
and for His society. It discloses the source of all 
human power, and directs its proper exercise and re¬ 
straint. It is the fountain of all knowledge, as of 
living waters, for renewing nature and restoring the 
free will of man to perfect obedience to the laws of the 
Creator. 

Our reflections will then be directed: First," to 
observations that apply to the general nature of this 
kingdom. Second, as it develops and perfects the 
social relations of man. Third, as it directs their corres¬ 
pondence for perfecting nature and her productions. 
Fourth, as it expresses the consummation of all things 
in the will of the Creator. 


REFLECTIONS 

FROM 

MY NOTE BOOK. 


FIRST. 

CHAPTER I. 

In speaking of the source and obligation of natural 
and social laws, Mr. Blackstone observes: “ When 

the Supreme Being created matter out of nothing, He 
impressed upon it laws from which it cannot depart, 
and without which it would cease to be.” 1st Black. 
Com., Sec. 2d. The image of man, or “ Word of 
God,” was the essential force of the laws that urged 
nature through preparatory forms, for correspondence 
with man, when he should come in the image of his 
Creator. The buried grain sinks down its roots, and 
receives the contribution of the mineral world, and, 
amidst the fragrance of unfolded flowers, constructs a 
germ for higher life in man, and from the red current 
of its distribution the human body is constantly 
rising; and, in its order, all created matter is urged 




8 


11EELEC T1ONS Eli OM 


till it is consummated in the ends and purposes of 
man. “So God made man in His own image, and 
thus the heavens and the earth were finished.” “I 
will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully 
made : marvelous are Thy works and that my soul 
knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from 
Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously 
wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes 
did see my substance yet being imperfect; and in Thy 
book all my members were written, which in contin¬ 
uance were fashioned, when, as yet, there was none of 
them.” Ps. cxxxix., 14, 15, 16. 

The Great First-Cause was not solitary in the uni¬ 
verse He had made; and man, in obedience to His 
laws, became His companion. “His laws were just 
and good, and brought man into intimate relations 
with Him. There was no evil.” “And God saw 
everything He had made, and behold it was very 
good.” Gen. i., 31. 

Without laws and a free will to choose and obey, man 
can have no society and companionship with God. 
To obey His laws is to live with Him in supreme 
happiness ; to disobey them is to depart from Him in 
supreme misery ; hence good and evil, happiness and 
misery, were, in the beginning, the necessary condi¬ 
tions for the development of the social nature of man. 

The act of creation embraced indefinite multiplica¬ 
tion of individuals with like capacities, and with 
conditions for perfect correspondence with each other, 
and with nature, and with God. 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


9 


By the abuse of His free will, man lost this perfect 
correspondence, and nature became perverted, and was 
developed into images of social discord, and of hostil¬ 
ity to God ; or, as Humbolt says, “ the inner world of 
thought and feeling did not reflect the external in its 
primitive purity.” 

After h is fall and the promise of a restorer, man 
exercised his free will under the conditions of two 
opposing natures : in one, he seeks, by the cultivation 
of nature, and by obedience to the constructing laws 
of enlarging relations, renewal in the kingdom of God, 
when in the image of Christ, he is restored to 
companionship with God, in the perfection, beauty, 
and harmony of the universe; preferring the other, he 
accepts the temptation of the universe in opposing 
conditions, refuses obedience to the lasvs of God, and 
to the charities and renewing life of social harmo¬ 
nies, and wastes through contracting relations, into 
the pride and fall of his primitive individuality. 

“ To raise up and direct man’s fallen nature, and to 
apply His laws to the exigencies of each individual,” 
says Mr. Blackstone, “ God has given him reason to 
discover what the laws of nature direct in every 
circumstance of life; and to assist his imperfect reason, 
He has seen proper to discover and enforce His laws 
by an immediate and direct revelation.” 

“ Reason,” says Locke, “ is natural revelation, 
whereby the Eternal Father of light and fountain of 
all knowledge, communicated to mankind that portion 
of truth which He has laid within the reach of 


10 


REFLECT!ONS FitOM 


their natural faculties, Revelation is natural reason 
enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated 
by God immediately, which reason approves, by the 
tistimony it gives that they come from God. 7 ’ Locke’s 
Works, vol. ii., 313. 

“ Upon these two foundations, 77 says Mr. Black- 
stone, “ the laws of reasons and the laws of revelation, 
depend all human laws. These laws are binding over 
all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No 
human laws are of any validity, if contrary to these; 
and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, 
and all their authority, mediately or immediately, 
from these originals. 77 Black. Com., Sec. 2. 

“ Man, 77 says Sir William Hamilton, “ is a social 
being by nature, and not by accidental necessity; for 
his faculties require the conditions of society for their 
development and application ; but from a family to a 
State, society is only possible under the conditions of 
a certain harmony of sentiment among its members, 
and a certain analogy of thought and feeling out of 
which society springs. There is then, in every asso¬ 
ciation, great and small, a certain gravitation of opinion 
towards a common center. Every one, as in the 
natural body, has a necessary sympathy with every 
other, and all together form, by their harmonious con¬ 
spiration, a healthy whole , 77 

This principle of unity is enlarged and applied to 
all the productions of nature, and to every species of 
God’s works. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his lecture 
before the Royal Academy, says, “in each of the 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


11 


various species of God’s works, there is a perfect cen¬ 
tral form which nature seems to intend in her pro¬ 
ductions.” 

There are then, in all associations, central conditions 
for perfecting individuals and societies for relations in 
more enlarged organizations; and that correspond 
with like conditions, in natural productions for perfect 
correspondence between man and nature. These cen¬ 
tral conditions were originally perfect, but became 
perverted in the fall of man ; yet they express capaci¬ 
ties for renewed perfection in the relations of univer¬ 
sal harmony. Of all agents, man exerts the greatest 
constructive power and modifying control over natural 
production. Yet he has no creative power; his labor 
is exercised to restore to natural products some perfect 
forms they are supposed to have originally possessed ; 
and, in associations, perfect conditions for just rela¬ 
tions between man and nature and God. His reason 
is expressed in obedience to the laws of social organi¬ 
zation, and to the perfecting relations and conditions 
of the natural state, for reproducing, by cultivation, 
their lost perfections, reflected from the central image 
of Christ in the universal kingdom of God. 

“ By his natural state is included all those into 
which he enters by his own acts and agreement, and 
that are conformable to his nature, agreeable to his 
constitution, and the end for which he was formed. 
In regard to these, the will can deliberate, suspend, or 
choose; hence man’s responsibility for his actions 
depends upon the use he makes of his power to choose 


12 


ItEFLE V T1ONS Fit OM 


the means of good ; for, by reason and revelation, he 
is able to see and know his situation, and, consequently, 
to take the right means to attain that end.” Hence 
the adventitious states are formed. 

“ The family is the first and most natural of all 
societies, and the foundation of them. Nature invites 
to this union/’ which is composed of the relations of 
husband and wife, parent and child, master and 
servant. 

By the union of families, a tribe, sept, or clan is 
formed under the sanction of a patriarch, senator, 
elder, or chief; by the union of tribes, civil society is 
formed under the direction of a sovereign. 

“Grotius says men have established civil society, 
from thence arises the civil power which St. Peter 
calls the civil or human power.” 1st Eph. ch. i, verse 
13. And St. Paul calls it a divine institution. Pom. 
xiii, v. 1. Cicero says, “ nothing is more agreeable to 
the supreme Diety that governs the universe than civil 
society lawfully established.” Burlemagui. 

Sir William Hamilton mentions, besides the 'partic¬ 
ular occasions of error, “ those comprehended under 
the general circumstances which modify the intellect¬ 
ual character of the individual: first, the particular 
degree of cultivation to which his nation has attained 
—and this cultivation is expressed, not merely in the 
state of the arts and sciences, but in the degree of its 
religious, political and social advancement; second 
the strict associations, in so far as they tend to limit 
the freedom of thought, and give it a one-sided direc- 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


13 


tion, such as schools, sects, orders, exclusive societies, 
corporations, castes, etc.” Ps. 390. 

“But the social organization, that should compre¬ 
hend all others in just relations for the highest devel¬ 
opment of all, would leave no room for moral expan¬ 
sion, and would be, in a mundane sense, perfect. All 
truths, in relation to our globe, are perfect as their 
universal relations are known, understood, and estab¬ 
lished ; science and reason have no other fields for 
induction, and man, no higher aims to accomplish in 
knowledge and wisdom; his nature must long for 
higher correspondences, and his social and moral soul 
for other relations in a broader and higher home.” 
“Finis est prima et altissima causarum .” 

“ Revelation can alone discover the laws of universal 
harmony and correspondence, and their perfect apti¬ 
tude to the physical, moral, and spiritual wants of 
man, and his peaceful relations in a universal society.” 

“The Bible prescribes laws and rules applicable to 
individuals, to small societies, and to States, as well as 
to universal, or catholic Christianity;” the former, 
expressing modifications of the undeveloped, and, 
necessarily, imperfect social man, were also imperfect 
until they were harmonized in the latter, in correspond¬ 
ence with the laws of nature and of God. “Moral 
and religious truth, and evil and falsehood, have anti¬ 
thetically arrayed themselves in long and persecuting 
struggles. The latter may boast of their victories in 
all these relations,” till the laws of all are fulfilled in 
the peaceful correspondence of a universal society, 


14 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


when evil wastes into contrasting suggestions of good, 
and the deceiver, among his angels, into a dissolving 
shade—the central figure in the panorama of death; 
and the truth becomes the image of God, impressed on 
nature and the hearts of the perfect, which is Christ the 
risen. 

Individuals and societies are attracted to this image, 
and are believers by the energies of its social nature, 
that is constantly perfecting for reunions and more 
enlarged correspondence in higher spheres. 

Christianity, then, is that “vast social organization 
extending from God to his subjects, and establishing 
a unity of correspondence throughout the universe* 
Christ, the Word of God, the central figure, is the 
maker of all, and contemplates the happiness of all, 
and, uniting all in infinite variety, contemplates the 
perfect harmony and liberty of all. All are of the 
same household, of the same Father; the power and 
happiness of all is the power and happiness of each, 
and that of each, the power and happiness of all.” 
All are renewed in the image of God, and in the 
language of St. Augustine, “become His companions.” 
“Henceforth I call vou not servants, but I have 
called you friends.” John xv., 15. 

“From this central image flow the ideas of reason, 
virtue, justice, and the nourishing and binding senti¬ 
ments and spiritual food that develop and unite man 
into perfect society,” composed of individuals, families, 
tribes, States, with all things perfected in universal 
correspondence, and restore the primitive order of 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


15 


things; and the interior reflects the exterior world in 
its primitive purity, and nature becomes united to 
spirit in the highest assthetic harmony; and all com¬ 
pose, in the heart of man, the germ—as of the buried 
grain—of a higher spiritual life in the society of God. 

Christ revealed to His apostles the kingdom of God, 
and commanded them to teach His laws, which laws 
are universal, eternal and unchangeable, and are 
equally applicable to all individuals, families and 
societies and nations, which cannot be repealed by 
kings, or senates, or people, and upon which depend 
reason and all human laws. Christ promised that He 
would remain with this kingdom, and that it should 
reflect, in His image, the eternal and universal rela¬ 
tionship of God to the world, and of man to God. 

Having the presence of Christ, and His sanction 
for teaching and applying the laws of God to all indi- 
viduals, families, societies and nations; and conform¬ 
ing them, in one faith, to the will of God, this kingdom 
was one, holy, catholic and apostolic. 

The Catholic Church is apostolic, and has, there¬ 
fore, the presence and sanction of God. It is organized 
for unity of correspondence throughout the universe. 
“Frotn its central rock, it displays the beauty and 
order of the combination that constitutes this unity, 
and the application of its laws to the exigencies of 
every individual, in every circumstance of life.” “ Its 
sacraments are the foundation-stone of every hier¬ 
archy. They combine all life and all degrees of its 
development. They constitute the mystical relations 
which approach man to God.” Cat. Coun. of Trent, 144. 


16 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


Th is Church contemplates the just disposition of all 
things for perfect correspondence between the free will 
of man and the will of the Creator. Its impulse for 
universal correspondence multiplies varieties, quickens 
industries, extends commerce, enlarges discoveries, 
perfects science, and urges every one, through enlarg¬ 
ing relations, on his progress to perfection. 

The power and force of its government consist in 
the voluntary attraction of all things, through its cor¬ 
respondence, for consummation in man, in the image 
of the Word of God. 

This Churc’h is the covenant between God and the 
free will of man, and receives the institutions of his 
reason, in all of their varieties, in just subordination 
for enlarging into the harmony of the universe—the 
freedom of the individual in subordination to the rela¬ 
tions of the family, and of the family to those of 
society, and of society to those of nations, and of 
nations to the government or will of God. The light 
of whose spirit is reflected in all, and from all, as that 
of the sanctuary from the candlesticks upon its altar. 

In the universality of this Church, nature is dis¬ 
solved into the truths of the sciences, enlarging in 
universal correspondence with the destiny of man. 
“ Universal,” says Humbolt, u is the awful rule that 
dissolves the ancient strife of the elements into accord¬ 
ant harmony, and is the first principle of the philosophy 
of nature.” 

This Church, by the submission of all, reflects, in 
each, the liberty, power and wisdom of all—the image 


MY MOTE BOOK. 


17 


of the Lamb opening the seals of persecuting rela¬ 
tions, and restoring all things to their primitive har¬ 
mony, when the repenting free will, ceasing its ancient 
strife, combines with the laws of God and nature in 
infinite varieties of reforming harmonies. 

“ She is a Queen, the daughter of a King, and the 
Spouse of the Lamb, and is clothed with variety.” 
Ps. Ixiv. 



2 





PART SECOND. 


CHAPTER I. 

The Roman state, like the Greek republics, was 
originally composed of a number of tribes associated 
together in a general form of government. It was, at 
first, ruled by a king, with the chiefs, senators, or the 
patres-familias of these tribes. Tacitus says: “ The 
reign of Romulus was despotic, but Servius Tullius 
gave a constitution to his country/ 7 wherein the popu¬ 
lar voice and property modified, to some extent, the 
exercise of the kingly power. “ The sovereign was 

also subject to the divine law. 

11 

‘ Begum timendorum in proprios greges, 
lieges in ipsos imperium est Jo vis.' ” 

After the expulsion of the kings, the colleges of 
pontiffs and augurs were self-organized ; and appointed 
their president, or pontifex maximus. “ In matters of 
religion, the pontifex maximus was the supreme 
authority, and from his decision there was no appeal. 
It was the custom of the Romans, in all important 
transactions of doubt, to consult the ministers of relig¬ 
ion. Before they went to war against any nation, they 
sent a messenger to declare they took the gods to wit¬ 
ness that such nation had acted unjustly, by refusing to 
comply with what reason and justice required. Hence, 


20 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


the chief pontiff and his magistrates were raised into 
higher correspondence with the world, and required to 
consult reason, and natural right, and justice.” They 
subjected the popular belief to reason and natural law, 
to meet the exigencies of their situation, and hence 
opened the way to peaceful advancement. 

A liberality was thus imparted to the minds of the 
Romans for the rights of others, and they incorporated 
the vanquished with themselves, except under circum¬ 
stances of great obstinacy or natural incompatibility; 
when they confiscated all their property, and sold them 
into slaverv. 

y 

After the government had become corrupt and 
venal, to such an extent had this latter practice pre¬ 
vailed, that, in the time of the first Caasar, more than 
half of the population of the Roman Empire were 
slaves, whose condition, as that of the proletaries, 
gladiators, etc., was regarded as hardly belonging to 
humanity. 

But, in the first case, they left freedom to the con¬ 
quered, and incorporated not only t he people, but their 
magistrates, and laws, customs, and whatever had 
been accomplished by them in arts, science, history, 
philosophy, literature, etc. Their empire embraced 
nationalities that retained their State-rights. “What 
would our empire have been,” says Seneca, “ if the 
vanquished had not been intermixed with the victors 
by the effect of a sound policy?” “Romulus, our 
father,” says Claudius, “ was very wise, with respect 
to most of the people he subdued, by making them, 




MY NOTE BOOK. 21 

who were his enemies, the same day, citizens.” Burl. 
387. When Paul was brought before Gallio, by the 
Jews, saying, “ This fellow persuadeth men to wor¬ 
ship God contrary to the laws,” Gallio said unto the 
Jews, “If it were a matter of wrong, or wicked lewd¬ 
ness ,, oh ! ye Jews, reason would that I should bear 
with you, but if it be a question of words and names, 
or of your law , look ye to it, for I will be no judge in 
such matters.” 

In administering their law, the prmtor was required 
to enforce the positive law, when it applied, but when 
there was none for the occasion, to decide according to 
the laws of reason and of God; and the collection of 
these decisions formed what was called the “jus civile .” 

The judices were seated on less elevated seats near 
him, and being instructed as to the law, applied the facts 
in reference to local customs: for instance, in a case 
of bailment, the judices were instructed, as the sugges¬ 
tion of reason and natural justice, that a high degree 
of diligence was required of the party exclusively bene¬ 
fited, slight diligence of the party who received no 
benefit, and ordinary diligence when the parties were 
mutuallv benefited; but to determine what consti- 
tuted these degrees of diligence, they were to enquire 
what was the customary diligence in like cases and 
under similar circumstances. Thus were the customs 
which formed the laws of particular societies, unless 
against reason and the law of God, protected by the 
judgment of the judices; and the symbol of Roman 
justice and power became a lictor’s axe, enclosed in a 


2 * 


22 


liEFLECTIO NS FROM 


bundle of rods, and might well be expressed by 
u e pluribus unuml 

The Roman constitution not only allowed to the 
cities and nations every variety of laws, customs and 
magistracy, but made no restraint on any preference 
by any citizen of the empire. “ O, excellent and 
divine laws,” says Cicero, “ let no man change his 
city against his will, nor let him be compelled to stay 
in it. These are the surest foundations of our liberty.” 
Burl. 268. 

This liberty of the Roman laws had a natural 
inclination to mercy. “ In pcenalibus causis benignius 
interpretandum est .” u At the trial of Priscus, the 
poet, before the senate, during the reign of Tiberius,” 
said M. Lepidus, in his defence, “ The wisdom of our 
ancestors has delivered down to us a system of justice 
founded in mercy.” Tacitus, Book hi., 1. 

Says Mr. Gibbon : “ The jurisprudence which had 

been grossly adapted to the wants of the first Romans, 
was polished and improved by incorporating the 
learning and philosophy of the Greeks. Cicero, after 
the example of Plato, composed a republic, and for 
its use, a treatise of laws, in which he labors to 
deduce from a celestial origin, the wisdom and justice 
of the Roman Constitution. The whole universe, 
according to his hypothesis, forms one immense com¬ 
monwealth. God and man partake of the same 
essence, and are members of the same community ; 
reason prescribes the law of nature and nations; and 
all positive institutions, however modified by accident 


MY NOTE BOOK . 


23 


or custom, are derived from the sense of right, which 
Deity has inscribed on every virtuous mind. From 
his government he mildly excludes the skeptic, who 
refuses to believe, and the epicurean, who refuses to 
act. Servius Sulpicius, his friend, the Roman lawyer, 
established his art on a certain and general theory. 
For the discernment of truth and falsehood, he applied 
as an infallible rule, the logic of Aristotle and the 
stoics, reduced particular causes to general principles, 
and diffused over the shapeless mass the light of order 
and eloquence.” Gibbon’s D. and F. of R. E., vol. 
iii., 160. 

In his treatise on the Roman law, Philimore says: 
“ The fundamental principle of the Roman law, as to 
the basis and source of law, being broad, enlightened, 
and elastic, eminently adapted it for universal empire. 
It acknowledged a general law, based upon princi¬ 
ples from which all laws derive their obligation, the 
covenant, as it were, between earth and heaven, which 
no human authority could abrogate or supersede; 
common to all mankind, and leaving ample scope for 
national and municipal law, admitting the law of 
custom as resting upon consent , yet making custom 
subject to reason, and local and private law subject to 
the general, or public law. It was adapted to univer¬ 
sal sway, and incorporated local customs. It was 
founded on reason and experience.” 

The extension of slavery, and the consequent 
degradation of the yeomanry, corrupted public morals 
and made everything venal at Rome. “Omnia 


24 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


Romce esse venalia Tiberius Cmsar being applied to 
by the senate to suggest reforms in the State, replied : 
“ Retrench the number of your slaves, so great at 
present that every family seems a nation in itself.” 
Tacitus, Book iii., 53. 

For means to gratify their corrupt appetites, the 
Romans multiplied occasions for oppressing the slaves, 
and for enslaving and plundering the nations. The 
fields that once had been cultivated by free men, were 
committed to the toil of slaves who crowded by thou¬ 
sands and in chains, in every department of labor, and 
even in the liberal arts. No consideration, however, 
protected them; their masters abused their power of 
life and death, and sacrificed them for gain, for show, 
and even to impart a fancied delicacy to their fishes. 
The free laborers gathered in the city, sold their votes, 
and helped to corrupt the government. For the 
amusement of the people, gladiators cut each other’s 
throats by thousands, to such an extent that Spartacus 
compared the killed to the wastes of war. 

Tiberius and Cains Gracchus, were pre-eminent 
by family, fortune, and education. In them were 
combined the piety, wisdom, justice and mercy of 
Roman power. Tiberius Gracchus, having consulted 
the chief pontiff, P. Licinius Crassus, contemplated, 
as tribune of the people, measures for their elevation 
and protection, by restoring the Licinian law. He 
was slain by order of the senate. Caius Gracchus, 
of whom Cicero said, he if any one, deserves to be 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


25 


the study of Roman youth, took the popular side 
against the patricians, and adopted the measures of 
his brother. The senate ordered the consul to see that 
no danger occur to the republic, and he was slain on 
the same night. 

The laws of the Gracchi did not contemplate a war 
on the just privileges of the aristocracy, but sought to 
rescue the yeomanry from degradation by their abuse. 
The aristocracy first introduced force and violence to 
resist, and then to subject the peaceful spirit of religion 
and the constitution. Marius then contended forcibly 
for the equal rights of all to a common humanity, but 
his party was in the end defeated and proscribed by 
Sylla, the leader of the aristocratic party. Then Cata- 
line, with a severe and desperate energy, endeavored 
to excite indignation in the bosoms of the oppressed 
freemen, but he and his soldiers were proscribed and 
cut down, while they pressed around the silver eagles 
of Marius; and his friends were massacred by the 
orders of Cicero, contrary to the merciful interposi¬ 
tion of Ccesar. Julius Cmsar, the kinsman of Marius, 
then became the leader of his party. He gave away 
some 20,000 small farms out of the public lands in 
Campania, and sought to restrain the exorbitant power 
of the nobles. He was assassinated in the senate 
house, a victinTto their jealousy. 

Directing the violent reaction, Augustus Cmsar was 
declared emperor, and the senate conferred on him the 
power to levy armies and navies, make war and peace, 
and command all the forces of the republic. He had 


26 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


also conferred on him the power of life and death, was 
free from the obligations of the laws, so that he might 
do as he pleased; and had also the power of chief 
pontiff, to determine finally all religious questions. 


CHAPTER II. 

The liberality of the Roman Constitution, which 
receved into the body politic the subjugated nations 
with their laws and customs, brought the Jewish, then 
the Christian law, face to face with the Roman. 

The Jews traced their origin back to the common 
father of all mankind. They represented this common 
father as originally happy in the companionship and 
image of his Maker, amidst the perfections of nature 
that offered all her stores, with only one restriction, to 
his enjoyment; that, for his disobedience to God, he 
had been cast out from this garden and from the 
presence of God, into a world of toil and pain and 
discord and death, with the promise, however, that a 
Saviour should be born of woman, who should redeem 
his seed from its condition of misery and death, and 
renew it for companionship with God; that the off¬ 
spring of this father had, for their crimes, been swal¬ 
lowed up by a flood, except a single family, that pre¬ 
served the germ of a renewed life in nature; that this 
family had multiplied into nations ; that out of one of 
them their patriarch, Abraham, was called by God to 



MY NOTE BOOK. 


27 


seek a possession and country that should be an inheri¬ 
tance to his posterity; that, in the advanced age of 
this patriarch and his wife, a child was born who 
should inherit his numerous servants, flocks, and his 
promised land; and that the same God who had com¬ 
manded him to sacrifice his first born, had, in the act 
of his obedience, provided a peaceful substitute, accep¬ 
table for him and for the nations. 

Here we see an altar raised in the family, by faith, 
to the Creator, who disposes all things in order by His 
infinite power and wisdom ; and whose infinite mercy 
accepted, for the sacrifice of obedience, the symbol 
that should enlarge social organizations of command 
and obedience into that of a kingdom of infinite 
love, where all things are ordered by His wisdom, 
power, and mercy for peaceful correspondence with the 
image of Christ—the victim who saves and protects. 
“ By myself have I sworn,” said the Lord, “ because 
thou hast not withheld thine onlv Son, that I will 
bless and multiply thee as the stars of heaven and the 
sands on the sea-shore; and, in thy seed, shall all the 
nations of the earth be blessed, and thy seed shall 
possess the gate of his enemies,” “For know him,” 
saith the Lord, a that *he will command his children, 
and his household after him, and they shall keep the 
way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment.” 

To Israel twelve sons were born, who became patri¬ 
archs, and to him the same covenant was renewed. In 
blessing his sons, he declared that “ authority should 
remain in Judah till Shiloh come, and unto him shall 
the gathering of the people be.” Gen. xlix., 10. 


28 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


All the circumstances of their history were calcu¬ 
lated to attach the Jews to God, and to each other; 
and amidst all of their afflictions, they never have for¬ 
gotten their bonds of affection, nor have they raised 
altars to forbidden gods. In slavery in Egypt they 
dropped their nomadic tendencies, and became a vast 
multitude seeking a nationality, and afterward, under 
Moses, their prophet and law-giver, returned to their 
promised land. 

Twelve tribes possessed these lands, by separate 
partitions, and one inherited and exercised under a 
chief priest, the religious ministry of their unity. 
These possessions were rich in the suggestive circum¬ 
stances of Catholic comprehension. 

“ Palestine/’ says Humboldt, “ is to be considered 
not only objectively as an actual phenomenon, but 
subjectively, as it is reflected on the feelings of man¬ 
kind, and in connection with the impressions that flow 
from the mysterious analogy existing between the 
mental emotions of the mind and the phenomenon of 
the perceptive world.” Cos. 62, 75. Humboldt fur¬ 
ther says: “ The descriptions and writings of the Old 
Testament are a faithful reflection of the country in 
which they were composed. Hebraic history and 
poetry, as a reflex of monotheism, always embraces 
the universe in its unity;” and in speaking of the 
104th Psalm, he says : “ We are astonished, in a lyric 
poem of such a limited compass, to see the whole 
universe sketched with a few bold strokes.” “ The 
lyric poetry of the Jews, from the very nature of its 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


29 


subject, is grand and solemn, and, when it treats of 
the earthly condition of mankind, is full £>f sad and 
pensive longing.” t( The climate of Palestine is pecu¬ 
liarly adapted to give rise to such observations.” Cos. 
57, 58, 59, 60. 

The laws of the Jews imnosed numerous obligations 
of protection to the feeble relations, and of affection, 
forgiveness, and mercy generally, as the commands of 
God. Their reapers left supplies for the.gleaners ; 
their multiplied Sabbaths gave rest to the toilers; and 
their years of jubilee proclaimed freedom to the en¬ 
slaved. They were distinct, yet united ; and Jerusa¬ 
lem became the centre of their unity. “ Jerusalem, 
where the tribes of the Lord go up, peace be within 
thy walls and prosperity in thy palaces.” Ps. cxxii. 

In their country, their history, their poetry, their 
laws and their religion, we see appetences for the 
development of justice and mercy, of love and frater¬ 
nal affection, not only for each other, but for mankind 
in a universal government of God. “ For Thy mercy 
is great unto the heavens and truth unto the clouds.” 
Ps. lvii., 10-11. “Thou hast heard the desire of 
the humble, to judge the fatherless and oppressed, 
that the man of the earth may no more oppress.” 
Ps. x., 17, 18. “Q, let the nations be glad and sing 

for joy ; for Thou shalt judge the people righteously, 
and govern the nations upon earth.” Ps. Ixvii., 4. 
a Hence the approved maxims of the Jews, especially 
of David, have been received as so many precepts of 
the divine and natural law ; and it is through this 


30 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


king that we first see self-discipline, under the instruc¬ 
tions of the.ministers of religion, enforced from con¬ 
viction of its being a divine command, to restrain 
natural wants.” 

u In a vision their prophet had seen the universal 
kingdom of Assyria pass away, and had foretold that 
those of the Medes and Persians and of the Greeks, 
should be followed by that of the Romans, and that 
in the days °f this kingdom the God of heaven should 
set up His kingdom, which should never be destroyed.” 
Dank, ii. Another of their prophets had declared 
that a “Virgin should conceive and bear a Son, and 
call His name Immanuel, and the government shall 
be upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called 
Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlast¬ 
ing Father, the Prince of Peace.” Is. vii.,14; ix., 6, 

“ Behold,” says a virgin of Bethlehem, “ from hence¬ 
forth all nations shall call me blessed. His mercy is 
from generation to generation, to them that fear Him. 
He hath received Israel, being mindful of His mercy, 
as He spake to our fathers, to Abraham and his seed, 
forever.” 

Christ, who was God and man, and who expressed 
the eternal and universal relationship of God to the 
world, and of man to God, came and organized His 
Church to the ends of His mission. He established it 
upon the rock of unity, which reflected the unity of 
nature in His image of man as the Wonderful Coun¬ 
sellor and Prince of Peace, and the unity of man in 
His image of God as the Mighty God and Everlasting 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


31 


Father. He appointed twelve apostles, and, under 
them, a ministry to teach all nations, and promised 
them continuity, perpetuity and His presence, till the 
consummation of all things; and sent them forth to 
invite all nations of every variety of positive institu¬ 
tions, into the unity of the peaceful correspondence of 
His kingdom. 

The positive laws of God were taught by His min¬ 
isters from the rock of this unity, which reflected 
infallibility, and no laws were suffered to contradict 
them ; but, subject to these laws of God, ample scope 
was given for the exercise of the free will in the con¬ 
ventional consent of customs and municipal law. 

A renewing life of liberty was given by the Church, 
whose image, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, was 
reflected on the heart of every Christian. In the nat¬ 
ural equity of its correspondence, nature and reason 
are renewed in perfect humanity, which, without spot 
or blemish, is adorned like a bride for her Lord, who 
is the everlasting Father of the regenerated in God. 

St. Peter, at the first council of Jerusalem, declared 
that God, in calling them, had made no difference 
between Jews and Gentiles; that the Church of Christ 
was the prophetic mountain of Isaiah, where all the 
nations of the earth were to meet in unity. 

Rome, in its internal government, contemplated the 
freedom of individuals, families, societies and nations, 
under conditions for universal society, whose civil 
power should govern by reason and the nature of 
things. It was not only a nation, but a nation of 


32 


11EFL ECT1ONS FR OM 


nations, with all philosophies, sciences, and arts, gath¬ 
ered around her to harmonize and refine all relations 
for the social unity of the universe. These conditions 
were expressed in her laws, wherein Cicero beheld 
reflected the philosophy of Aristotle and the stoics, 
that subordinate individuals to generals through fam- 
ilies, societies, nations, to the universe or government 
of God; “ where God and man partake of the same 
essence, and become members of the same community; 
where all are brethren of the same household, of the 
same Father; and reason prescribes the law of nature 
and of nations, and all positive institutions, however 
modified by accident or custom, are derived from the 
sense of right, which the Deity has inscribed on every 
virtuous mind.” 

The laws of the Romans were based on principles 
from which all laws derive their obligations, which Mr. 
Philimore calls the covenant between earth and heaven, 
which are common to mankind, and which no human 
authority can abrogate or supersede ; and which Cicero 
says are agreeable to nature, common to all men, con¬ 
stant, immutable and eternal; not to be retrenched, 
altered, or repealed, either by senate or people, because 
God has made them. 

St. Paul said of the Romans “That which may be 
known of God is manifest in them, for God hath 
shewed it unto them, for the invisible things from the 
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood 
by the things that are made, even His eternal power 
and Godhead.” 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


33 


But, opposed to the wisdom and freedom of the 
Roman jurisprudence, there had grown up a system 
of pride and tyranny, combined with epicurean skep¬ 
ticism, that separated liberty from the fear of God, 
and reason from His instructions; and self-indulgence 
made for every lust a corresponding God. When St. 
Paul said of them : “ They became haters of God, 
without natural affection, implacable and unmerciful; 
and God gave them over to a reprobate mind.” 

Unto the Jews Paul said : “ Ye are the children of 
the prophets, and of the covenant which God made 
with our fathers, saying unto Abraham: ‘And in thy 
seed shall the nations of the earth be blessed; unto 
you, first, has God raised up his Son, Jesus, and sent 
Him to bless you in turning away every one from his 
iniquities/ ” 

The Jews preferred their exclusive nationality, 
through which they construed their ceremonial law 
and their prophecies, repulsed Christ and the apos¬ 
tles, and afterward, misconceiving the prophecy “ that 
they should possess the gates of their enemies,” as 
applicable to national conquest, rebelled against the 
Romans. They were subjugated, not as formerly, but 
their city was razed, all their property seized, their 
temple burnt, and themselves sold into slavery and 
scattered among the nations. The Rome of licen¬ 
tiousness and cruelty submitted to the despotism, and 
the nations became enslaved to the will of a deified 
Emperor. But the Rome of liberty, laws, reason, phil¬ 
osophy, science, and the arts, passed in succession, 


3 * 


34 


ItEFLEC T1ONS Fit OM 


according to prophecy and the anticipation of philoso¬ 
phers, into the kingdom of God. Says St. Augustine : 
“Per populum Pomanum placuit Deo terrarum orbem 
debellare ut in unam societatem reipublicce leguni que 
productum longe lateque placant.” 


CHAPTER III. 

Rome then became the centre of civil and ecclesi¬ 
astical unity of the Church, and the nation of nations 
was succeeded by the Church of churches, “whose 
faith,” says St. Paul, “was spoken of throughout the 
world.” She proclaimed freedom to the nations, and 
gave free scope to all adventitious institutions of the 
freewill of man, and harmonized them for peaceful 
correspondence with the will of God, revolving around 
the centre of unity like the wheels of Ezekiel, “that 
had the appearance of wheels within wheels, and 
whithersoever the spirit went, the wheels were lifted 
up and followed the spirit till they supported the 
throne of God.” 

“ The Church received the natural and revealed laws 
of the Jews, the natural and positive law of the 
Romans, except when opposed to her construction of 
the will of God, and started upon her mission to 
convert the nations. The Jews wandered without 
nationality or laws, in slavery; but Israel was received 
by the Church, and carried among the nations, where 
he is reflected subjectively as a nation, and in connec- 



MY NOTE BOOK. 


35 


tion with appetences for the development of justice, 
mercy, love and fraternal affection for mankind in a 
universal government of God, whose Jerusalem, 
renewed and enlarged, will preside over the peace and 
harmony of nations.” Rev. xxi. 

The struggle began between the corrupt religion 
and perverted morals of the Romans, reconstructing 
all relations and conditions under the absolute will of 
a deified Emperor, and the true religion of a govern¬ 
ment of reason, of nature, and of God, peacefully 
harmonizing all relations and conditions in a compre¬ 
hensive unity that should, as from a rock, direct the 
universal correspondence and free and perfect devel¬ 
opment of all. the former had transferred the fear 
of God, that elevates, to man, that degrades. The 
latter feared God and kept His commandments, as the 
necessary condition for freedom and happiness in the 
society of God. 

The Church first applied her organizing power to 
combine her children of all conditions, for mutual sym¬ 
pathy and assistance, in associations of individuals and 
families, as foundations for development, according to 
the morality of the gospel, into a broader and more 
comprehensive unity. She was Catholic in her birth, 
and grew, like the mustard seed, from the dust into 
the shelter of nations. 

“ Among us,” says Athenagoras, contrasting the 
morality of the Christians with the vices of the 
Romans in the first century, “will be found the igno¬ 
rant, the poor laborers, and old women. Loving our 


36 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


neighbors as ourselves, we have learned not to strike 
those who strike us, not to go to law with those who 
have robbed us. Allowing for the difference of our 
years, we regard some as our children, others as our 
brethren and sisters; the most aged we have as our 
fathers and mothers; the hbpes of another life make 
us despise the present. Marriage with us is a holy 
vocation, which imparts the grace necessary to bring 
up our children in the fear of the Lord. We have 
renounced your bloody spectacles, persuaded there is 
but little difference between looking on murder and 
committing it. The pagans expose their children to 
get rid of them, we consider the action as homicide. 
We are accused as being factious; the factiousness of 
Christians is to be united in the same religion, in the 
same morals, in the same hope. We conspire to pray 
to God in common, to read the Holy Scriptures. If 
any of us have sinned he is deprived of communion 
and in taking part in our assemblies of prayer, until 
he has done penance. Old men whose wisdom merits 
this honor, preside in these assemblies. Every one 
contributes a monthly sum according to his means and 
inclination; this treasure serves to feed and bury the 
poor, to support orphans, shipwrecked sufferers, exiles, 
and those condemned for the cause of God to the mines 
and prisons. ‘ If any give us a blow on one cheek, 
we turn to them the other. 7 ” Darras, C. H. 

The rapid propagation of the gospel developed the 
wonderful power of the Church for organizing all 
societies into a comprehensive unity of mankind, and 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


37 


in relations of peaceful correspondence for the highest 
development and happiness of all; and called the 
attention of the most exalted intellects, as it had done 
the humblest, to its doctrine. 

“ Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, published his great 
work of evangelical 'preparation and demonstration , 
wherein he demonstrates the truth of the gospel and 
refutes the theogony of paganism. Having exposed 
its errors, it remained to be shown how much the 
Jewish religion had served as an avenue and prepar¬ 
ation to that of Jesus Christ. At this point of view 
the religion of Jesus ceases to be a new religion in 
the world. It begins with the fall of Adam which 
leads to the promise of a Saviour. It is perpetuated 
in the patriarchs, in the exceptional history of the 
Hebrew people, in the hopes of a just, in the figures 
of the Old Testament, in the inspired voices of the 
prophets, and is finally realized in the coming of the 
Messiah, who fulfills all the prophecies, verifies all the 
figures, crowns all the hopes, answers the expectations 
of the Jews, the desires of the patriarchs, and the 
promise of the Restorer of the human race, made by 
God himself in the infancy of the world/’ Darras. 

“In h is work, ‘The Chronicles/ Eusebius unveils 
‘ the design over eaj'thly empires , which all meet in the 
divine and eternal empire of Jesus Christ / In this 
work he availed himself of the analogous labors of 
Justin of Palestine, A. D. 140; St. Theophilus, A. D. 
175; Clement of Alexandria, A. D. 190; and Julius 
Africanus, A. D. 250, all of whom place religion at 


38 


RE ELEC TIONS FR OM 


the summit of science, by proving the excellence ot its 
dogmas and their harmony with sound reason—that 
of Jesus Christ, the Word of God and Wisdom Incar¬ 
nate.” Darras, C. H. 

“ The pagan world sought to drown Christianity in 
a sea of blood. The popular hatred was skillfully 
directed by the emperors,” who had assumed all the 
powers of chief pontiff and Caesar Divus in the legal 
and political theogony of paganism; by the poets and 
philosophers who interwove their fabulous physico- 
allegorical theogony in the popular belief of its 
necessity to sustain the government, science, art, liter¬ 
ature, etc.; “and history presents the spectacle of 
centuries of massacres, of murders, and of judicial 
tortures, publicly perpetrated against thousands of 
victims of every age, rank, and sex, in all parts of the 
world.” Darras, C. H., vol. i., 76. 

“ The oppressed world still toiled and suffered for 
the vision of a perfect and beautiful development in 
this life, and for a spiritual companionship with God, 
beyond the grave, when the Cross, long the symbol of 
patient suffering, appeared to the eyes of Constantine 
and vanquished the Roman eagles.” Ch. v. 

“From this time there were two sovereigns of the 
same faith, recognized and proclaimed to the world.” 
One was at the head of a comprehensive, political and 
religious organism, which recognized in him the ulti¬ 
mate judgment in laws, religion and government. It 
was exterior and ruled by the sword, by positive legis¬ 
lation, wealth, and force, and was fallible : The other 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


39 


was at the head of an organization formed by God to 
declare and teach His laws. The mount where the 
nations should meet to receive prophetic blessings, and * 
which recognized in Him the ultimate judgment in 
religion and morals. It was interior and spiritual, 
and ruled without other force than the divine promises, 
reason, and the nature of things; without other sup¬ 
port than its weakness, and without other arms than 
its faith ; and in teaching this faith, was infallible. 

Constantine removed the seat of his empire from 
Rome to Constantinople, and did not formally attach 
himself to the Christian organization till just before 
his death, and, of course, claimed in it no power to be 
disputed. His successor, Constantins, turned Arian, 
and denied the divinity of Jesus Christ and perse¬ 
cuted the Church. Christianity had refused subjection 
and obedience, in matters of morals and religion, to 
Cresar, from the time of Christ, and now that he had 
been converted, it was willing to receive him into the 
house of God, but refused to tear down this house and 
enter into temples man had erected, where an emperor 
ruled, and where the divinity of her Lord was denied. 
It still proclaimed in the language of her Master, 
<e Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar’s, and unto -God the things that are God’s 
but let Caesar, becoming a Christian, be subject to the 
laws of God as they are declared and published by His 
ministers whom He has sent. 

The Emperor Justinian, as the head of the temporal 
government, purged the Roman law of all that he 


40 


REF LEG TIG NS FR OM 


conceived was opposed to the revealed laws of God, 
and established it by positive legislation, as the law of 
'the Roman Empire. In the Pandects he is called 
Dominusnoster,sacratissimus princeps ; in the Institutes, 
Sacratissimus princeps ; in the code, the same as Augustus 
Perpetuus , which we have seen included the power to 
determine finally questions of faith and morals. Says 
the code : “ Imperator solus et conditor et enterpres 
leg is existimatur.” 

The power of Augustus subjected everything to the 
will of the emperor, even the laws of Gorl, which in 
the days of their liberty, the ancient Greeks and 
Romans had always insisted should be left to the 
interpretation of the priesthood. In succeeding ages, 
the pride of local bishops combined with the ambition 
of the Greek Emperor and rejected the universal 
authority of the Church, and invested the emperor 
with the supreme authority of Augustus. The Pan¬ 
dects of Justinian, especially at the university of 
Bologna, created a school of jurists, from which pro¬ 
ceeded the Ghibelline Cmsarism of the west, and 
which subverted, nearly everywhere in Europe, the 
Gothic constitutions that had been established under 
the instructions of the Church. 

The Roman Empire was more comprehensive than 
any modern nation of Europe, and, had the emperor 
been the supreme judge in the Church, Christianity 
would have been perverted at the moment of his con¬ 
version, or would have expired at the fall of his 
empire. 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


41 


The Church claimed to be of* God, to be immortal, 

universal, and holy, and to be one. She had for her 

mission the perfect development and happiness of 

mankind in a spiritual union with God, and claimed 

to govern according to the appointment of God, the 

right to judge of her own jurisdiction, and the proper 

means for the efficiencv of its action. 

* 

This universal society contemplated the harmonious 
union of nations, societies, families, and individuals, 
into a voluntary government that should constrain all 
u to conform to what is most agreeable to man’s 
nature, to his constitution, to the good use and perfect 
development of his faculties, to his supreme, his ulti¬ 
mate end: ” “ All of which circumstances,” says Burle- 
maqui, “ agree with the civil state, and constitute the 
perfection and security of liberty.” Burl. 205. 

These universal relations have a central form of 
unity for a common direction to these ends, when the 
liberty of each individual conforms to the law of God 
and nature, is injurious to none, but is consistent with 
that of all, like that of the members of the body, that 
is expressed by a spirit of unity that directs all to a 
common purpose. 

Reason enlarges its principles for universal rela¬ 
tions and for instructions from the correspondence of 
the Church of Christ; and historians, jurists, moral¬ 
ists, statesmen, and societists recognize and co-operate 
with the design of the Creator. 

Among the Romans, the priesthood under the con¬ 
trol of the pontifex maximus, whose decision was final, 


42 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


subjected all popular belief to his interpretation of the 
laws of God and nature, suggested by the most 
enlarged correspondence, knowledge, wisdom, and 
experience, and applied them as the exigency of the 
occasion required. 

Among the Jews, the popular belief was subjected 
to the interpretation of a priesthood, under the control 
of a High Priest, whose decision was final, This 
priesthood was set apart to direct the Jews in the true 
faith in God, and in obedience to His positive laws, to 
the ends of their development as a nation, and, as an 
instrument for the development of a government where 
all the nations should be blessed in the peace and har¬ 
mony of His universal kingdom. In this universal 
kingdom there is a priesthood that is united in Peter 
and his successors, to whom have been committed by 
the builder the keys of his kingdom. 

St. Peter warned the disciples against the confined 
construction of their ceremonial law by the Jews. 
He also told them that “ no law is of any private 
interpretation.” 

The power of interpretation by that which wields 
the sword would subject liberty, laws, reason, and reli¬ 
gion to chiefs of religious despotisms, when the unity 
and peace of the kingdom of Christ would be rent by 
discord reflected in His name, on the passions of 
nations, societies and individuals. 

Those who sought to reach heaven by the works of 
their hands were scattered by the confusion of their 
tongues; and those who convert human organizations 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


43 


into oracles of God, soon behold unity and all social 
nature confused in the licentiousness of private inter¬ 
pretation. 

But this power, committed to the chief of a college 
of priests, representing the organized unity of man¬ 
kind, without other force than reason and the laws of 
God, would elevate reason, and the spiritual and 
moral powers above those of force, and to the ends of 
perfect development, happines, and liberty. 

u The wise extend their enquiries wide; 

See how all nations are by connection tied : 

Fools view but part, and not the whole survey, 

So crowd existence all into a day.” 

“ When Sir Thomas More and the virtuous Fisher 
were thrown into the dungeons of the tower for not 
admitting the supreme religious authority of the king, 
asserted by him to divorce his wife and marry another, 
Cranmer and Cromwell were appointed their judges. 
“ You should grant,” said some one to the late Chan¬ 
cellor, “ that your conscience has erred, since it is 
opposed by the council of the whole nation.” “I 
might believe it,” replied More, “ had I not in my 
favor a far greater council—the whole of Christen¬ 
dom.” 

By the Koman priesthood, religion'was subjected to 
reason. “ Bight reason,” says Cicero, “is a true law, 
agreeable to nature, common to all men, constant, 
immutable, eternal; neither senate nor people can dis¬ 
pense with it; it is the same everywhere and at all 
times; God has published it, who is the Author thereof; 


44 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


and the sole Sovereign of mankind.” The physico- 
allegorical theogony of the poets and artists, was the 
machinery which reason derided, but used to apply its 
laws to the exigencies of every case. Cicero won¬ 
dered how two priests could meet without laughing. 

In the religion of the Jews and Christians, reason is 
instructed by revelation which reason approves by the 
testimony and proof it gives that it comes from God : for 
as Mr. Blackstone has remarked: “To raise up and 
direct man’s fallen nature, and to apply His laws, God 
has given him reason, to discover what the laws of 
nature direct in every circumstance of life: and, to 
assist his imperfect reason, He has seen proper to dis¬ 
cover and enforce His laws by an immediate and direct 
revelation; and upon these two foundations—the law 
of nature and the law of God—depend all human 
laws.” 

In order to know His laws, Christ instructed every 
one to go to His Church, which He called the “Ground 
and Pillar of Truth,” and declared that “those who 
would not obey it should be regarded as heathens, and 
cast from it.” 

After Eusebius aud the earlier fathers, St. Augus¬ 
tine says: “The eternal law is the divine law or will 
of God, commanding the observance and forbidding 
the disturbance of the natural order of things.” “ Reve¬ 
lation,” says he, “ confirms the law of reason and con¬ 
verts natural philosophy and the sciences into religious 
doctrine.” 

“Boethius, the most learned of the Romans, was an 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


45 


illustrious senator at the beginning of the sixth cen¬ 
tury, He was honored with the friendship of the 
Popes, St. Symmachus, P. Hermidas, and St. John I., 
and under their protection, undertook to reconcile 
reason with faith, philosophy, and the religion of 
Christ; and to prove that the one is the porch that 
leads to the other.” St. John Demascenus applied 
Aristotle’s logic to the study of theology.—Darras. 

Thus Christian learning blended in one harmonious 
combination, nature and grace, humanity and the 
Church, reason and faith, philosophy and theology. 
“Scholasticism and Mysticism,” continues Darras, in 
his C. PI., “correspond to the faculties by which the 
soul knows and desires.” Under the direction of the 
Church, the former guided and sustained the latter, 
within the bounds of truth. 

The Church thus directed faith and reason to the 
preservation of the civilization of antiquity, with its 
laws, philosophy, science, art, etc. She appropriated 
their truths, and they became Roman and Catholic, 
and Christian, with appetences under her central 
guidance, for universal development into a unity and 
harmony of every variety. All things began to be 
considered in their universal relations. It became 
necessary for judges to consider, rather than the will 
of an emperor, the fundamental principles from which 
all laws derive their obligation; to consult custom , 
reason and the divine law, and the nature of things; 
or, as Mr. Philimore says, “The covenant , as it were, 
between earth and heaven .” And, borrowing its infalli- 

4 * 


46 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


bility, their decisions became precedents above parlia¬ 
ments and kings, and a check to their power. 

Under the direction of the Pope, the Church main¬ 
tained—as the friends of liberty among the Greeks 
and Romans had always done—that whatever was 
opposed to God and reason was null and void; and 
that whatever God has determined, whether by 
organizing His Church, or by His laws, positive or 
natural, cannot be resisted by kings, senates, or people, 
which is the foundation of the maxim, “ It is better 
to obey God than man. (Obedire oportet Deo magis 
quam hominibus .)” Acts 5. 

“ The Church maintained that sovereignty is a right 
conferred upon a person, and not upon a man; that it 
is with the people, and they may confer it on whom 
they please; but that they cannot confer unlimited 
power, nor can they authorize any one to violate the 
laws of God or of nature; but, under these restric¬ 
tions, they may confer sovereignty with such limita¬ 
tions and responsibilities as they may see proper, 
Burl. 208; Balm.: “that the people have a right to 
disregard laws violating divine and natural laws.” 
St. Luke, ch. xii., 14; 1st Ep. to Cor., ch. x., 4; 
Phillipians, ch. iii., 20; Ephesians, ch. vi., 17. 
“That they were not bound to obey the Ten Command¬ 
ments as the law of Moses, but as being affirmed by 
Christ, and as so many precepts of the natural law.” 
Cat. Council of Trent, 238, 241. “ In a word, the 

Church maintained that sovereign authority was 
limited by the positive laws of God, as taught by His 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


47 


Church, and by the intention of those who conferred 
this sovereignty; and the limitation of the royal 
authority was a first and essential principle of all the 
early Gothic systems established in Europe.” 

Without this principle of pre-eminence, Christianity 
could never have supplanted the barbarian customs, and 
dispelled the gloom of the Dark Ages, and substituted 
the lights and refinements of modern civilization ; nor 
could the British Constitution have ever been estab¬ 
lished upon the popular will, as declared by Mr. 
Blackstone. It is the pre-eminence of generals over 
particulars, and of broader relations and correspon¬ 
dencies over those more contracted. 

“In the fourth century,” says Mr. Gibbon, “ the 
Church had formed itself into a great social and con¬ 
federate republic.” 

, “Behold her in the coming ages, with unbounded 
expansion, extend her power throughout the world, 
speak the language of every people, and bind all to 
her mild dominion, and settle all questions by her 
Pontiffs and her councils, and by their instructions 
lay the foundation of Christian States and societies!” 
Darras, Church History, vol. i. 

In the fifth century, the barbarians overran Italy 
and the Western Empire, and the dominion of Con¬ 
stantinople was withdrawn. “The moral, as well as 
the political world, was crumbling at all points. 
Government, legislation, laws, literature, science, his¬ 
tory, and the arts, all were being swallowed up in a 
fearful flood. In the midst of this decay, a new society 


48 


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comes into life; it is Christianity. A mighty power 
binds together its various elements, and this power is 
the Papacy.” Darras, C. H. tc The imperial uni¬ 
versality,^ says Michelet, “ was destroyed, but there 
appears the Catholic universality.” Michelet’s France, 
vol. i., 61. 


CHAPTER IV. 

“ This Church,with her lamps thus trimmed and sup¬ 
plied, stood alone, amidst this night and storm, this 
wreck and tomb of nations, and undertook to recom¬ 
pose everything; and this was her ceaseless toil 
through the whole course of the Middle Ages. The 
subjugated looked up to their spiritual directors for 
advice and protection, and the barbarian chiefs natu¬ 
rally availed themselves of their assistance to 
appropriate their new possessions and subjects.” 
Darras, C. TI. 

“The Roman title of Defensor Civitatisj in every 
city, devolved upon the bishops, who assumed their 
natural position between the lords and their vassals, as 
the representatives of mercy. They began by giving 
the example of a gentle and tutelary authority ; and 
the truth passed into a by-word, that no man could be 
happier than a serf of a church or monastery. 
Widows and orphans were under the special protec¬ 
tion of the bishops, and were never persecuted without 
their knowledge. The weak were entrusted to the 



MY MOTE BOOK. 


49 


guardianship of the Church—the only power that gave 
any promise of weathering the social storms that con¬ 
vulsed the period.” 

The ecclesiastical schools and monasteries were the 
only shelter and salvation to letters and public instruc¬ 
tion. The rule of St. Benedict prescribed manual 
labor, study, poverty, chastity and obedience. The 
purpose of the order was to civilize the barbarian 
tribes, and save the existing models of Greek and 
Latin civilization. “ Their teachers carried the light 
to barbarous nations, and widened the bounds of civil¬ 
ization ; their hands cleared the dense forests of the 
most barren wastes, and their patient toil made rich 
and smiling fields.” 

“ The bishops and their numerous councils became, 
from necessity and the consent of all, the administra¬ 
tors of the law and the great assizes of nations.” 
Darras, C. H. 

Yet, no force was used to convert the barbarians, or 
anyone else to Christianity, by consent of the Church. 
c< JReligionis non est religionem cogere” says Tertullian. 
St. Augustine, writing to the imperial proconsul in 
Africa, deprecating severity against the Donatists and 
Arians, says : “ We desire them to be converted, not 

slain.” Says St._Austin to the King of the Saxons, 
in England : <( No force must be used to convert 

them to Christianity.” St. Leo the Great says : “ The 
unity of the Church being content with the priestly 
sentence, shrinks from sanguinary vengeance.” The 
supreme government of God can exercise no force; all 


50 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


subjection and discipline must be voluntary. To the 
unfaithful and incorrigible, all her power is embraced 
in the hexameter : “ Os, orare, vale, communio, mensa, 
negatur” 

Among the barbarians the accused enjoyed the 
guaranty of two jurisdictions; they fell under the 
sword of barbarian justice only when they cast off the 
merciful and suffering intervention of the Church, 
offering the Christian Roman law to their choice; 
wherefore, it became modified in its application by 
variety of choice, into innumerable local customs. 
Mr. Blackstone savs : “ It is one of the characteristic 

marks of English liberty, that our common law 
depends upon custom, which carries the internal evi¬ 
dence of freedom along with it, that it probably was 
introduced by the voluntary consent of the people.” 
Black. Com. In., vol. i., 130. 

<e To the Church,” says Hurter, “ is Europe indebted 
for that variety of institutions that compose its nation¬ 
alities, out of which grew that variety of intellectual 
culture, and those practical maxims which have nour¬ 
ished and secured the love of liberty and patriotism 
among its nations.” 

In the tenth century, which, Baronins says, “ by its 
barrenness and sterility of good, was called the Iron 
Age; and, on account of its perversity, the Leaden Age, 
and on account of the scarcity of writers, the Dark 
Age,” it seems that all the powers of darkness were 
turned loose upon the house of God; and while gov¬ 
ernments, laws, philosophy, science, and all other 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


51 


foundations were about to be swept away in darkness, 
it stood firm on the rock of faith, and received them 
all under the friendly protection of those faculties 
that now excite unfriendly apprehension and distrust; 
“ and, at the time the head of the Church showed least 
piety, irresistible in the divine spirit of her destiny, 
the Church beheld coming to her bosom Harold, King 
of Denmark, with all his people, Dukes Liberius of 
Muscovy, Micesleus of Poland, Waldemar of Prussia, 
and Spetineus of Bohemia, with all their vassals. 
Thus Hungary was converted by St. Stephen, and 
Russia by St. Boniface; and all, as if urged by a 
supernatural impulse, united with the Church.” 

" And God so arranged that in an age when the 
Pontiffs were not irreproachable, the councils of 
Chalons in 915, Troyes in 921 and 927, and Rheims 
in , 995, recognized and venerated in the Popes 
superior authority, and indestructible pontifical sov¬ 
ereignty.” Lives of the Popes, by Chevalier de 
Mon tor, 239. 

" In this century,” says Darras, “ the Papacy was 
forced to struggle against the claims of sovereigns, the 
encroachments and simony of bishops, against the 
ignorance and corruption of the clergy and laity, and 
the native barbarity of new races; but it triumphed 
over the horrors of this deep night, and was the first 
to break forth from its heavy gloom, far ahead of all 
others, and to lead them into the light of modern 
civilization.” 

“ The Popes and the bishops,” says Mr. Gibbon, 
u formed the connecting link between the barbarian 


52 


liEFLECTIONS FROM 


element and the old nationalities, and, by opening the 
way for the fusion of races, became the fathers of 
modern civilization.” Darras C. H., vol. ii., 2. 

The old order of things was swept away in dark¬ 
ness. The Catholic faith remained firm on the rock 
of unity, and, as Voltaire has said, “ became the foun¬ 
dation of the public law of Europe.” 

The Church, having purged the Roman law of all 
that was opposed to the laws of God, engrafted its 
principles of natural justice, and the forms that reason 
had ordered for their application to the exigencies of 
individuals, on the precepts of the natural and divine 
law interwoven in the history of the Jews, and on 
Christian doctrine, “ when it was freely accepted by 
the nations, and became, under all of its modifica¬ 
tions, the common law of the great Christian com¬ 
monwealth, and the immovable rock on which society 
must, in its progress, hereafter rest.” 

“ The organizing and directing power of the Popes /’ 
says Darras, “ guided the movement of European 
society, and, from the heart of the cloistered life, the 
signal of intellectual revival was given.” 

“ When every part of society,” says Guizot, 
“ besides the kings and nobles, were deprived of 
liberty, and lived entirely at the will of their masters, 
the first instance that broke in upon the violent system 
of government was the practice—begun in Italy—of 
erecting communities and corporations, endowed with 
privileges and a separate municipality, which gave 
them protection against tyranny.” 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


53 


u Foundations of learning were established, and 
their liberties and charters were placed under the 
protection of the Pope. Free cities, with charters and 
constitutions, were established everywhere; their com¬ 
merce and manufactures enlarged the free and friendly 
intercourse of Europe; their merchants regulated the 
laws of trade and the standard value of money. In 
Italy, by the assistance of Pope Alexander III., they 
successfully resisted the power of the emperor to 
enslave them, and became the free cities of Italy. At 
Constance, Frederick Barbarossa signed a final treaty 
of peace with the Lombard cities and republics; this 
treaty became the ground-work of the public law of 
Italy. The learned writings of Guizot unanswerably 
prove that the Lombard republics owe their freedom 
and their very existence to Alexander III. A 7 oltaire 
says of Alexander III.: i The man, perhaps, in those 
rude times we call the Middle Ages, who deserved 
best from the human race, was Pope Alexander III. 
He revived the rights of the people and repressed the 
crimes of kings. Before that time, all Europe was 
divided into two classes of men, lords and slaves. If 
men have regained their rights, it is chiefly to Alex¬ 
ander III. that they are indebted for it.’ ” Darras. 

The wealth and influence of these corporations made 
them an estate of the realm, as the communes of 
France; “the great Chronicles and Froisart say, 
nearly always, the churchmen, the nobles, and the 
good towns,” Guizot’s History of France, vol. ii., 236, 
or incorporated them in the general parliament, as the 


54 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


commons of England; the treaty of Staples was 
confirmed in 1492, “per tres Status regni Anglice rite 
et debite convocatos, videlicit , per prelates et claros no- 
biles et communitates ejusdem regni” Rymer xii, 508. 

These communities were generally formed by the 
bishops, under the sanction and protection of ponti¬ 
fical authority, and were based on Roman traditions 
and Christian sentiments. They expressed relations 
of obligations between the governors and the governed, 
and are the basis of modern charters and written 
constitutions. 

The following is the confirmation of a charter by 
Boudin, Bishop of Noyan: “This establishment, 
founded by me, sworn to by a great number of per¬ 
sons, and granted by the king, let no man be so bold 
as to destroy or alter. I give warning thereof, on 
behalf of God and myself, and I forbid it in the name 
of pontifical authority; whoever shall transgress and 
violate the present law be subjected to excommunica¬ 
tion, and whoever, on the contrary, shall faithfully 
observe it, be preserved forever among those who 
dwell in the house of the Lord.” Guizot, His. of 
France, vol. ii., 216. 

Conventional checks were also instituted to prevent 
the abuse of the natural faculties of government, 
which, being thus restrained, promote, by their moral 
force, a natural equity that speaks the right of all, as 
Magna Charta, the customs of parliament, the estab¬ 
lishment and practice of the courts, and independence 
of the judges and other popular conventionalities 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


55 


which were recommended by the Church. But unless 
connected with the naturally gravitating powers of the 
nation, these conventionalities are incomplete, have no 
moral force, and tend constantly to degenerate into 
factious licentiousness and anarchy, as under Charles 
I. of England, Louis XVI. of France, and in Paris 
during the late war with Prussia. 

Says Mr. Leckey in his History of Rationalism, page 
170, u By consolidating the heterogeneous and anar¬ 
chical elements that succeeded the downfall of the 
Roman Empire, by infusing the conception of a bond of 
unity that is superior to the divisions of nationhood, 
and of a moral tie that is superior to force, by soften¬ 
ing slavery into serfdom, and preparing the way for 
the ultimate emancipation of labor, Catholicism laid 
the very foundation of modern civilization, herself 
the most admirable of all organizations. There 
was formed beneath her influence a vast net-work of 
organizations, municipal and social, which supplied a 
large proportion of the materials of almost every 
modern structure. In the transition from slavery to 
serfdom, and from serfdom to liberty, she was the most 
zealous, the most universal and the most efficient 
agent.” In. Heeded, 87; citing Kent’s Com.; 
Wheaton’s El. of Nat. Law; Hallam’s His. Mid. 
Ages ; and Lit. of Europe. 

But these peaceful communities, that had grown up 
under the organizing protection of the Papacy, and 
through which flowed its moral influence for construct¬ 
ing societies and governments of liberty and civiliza- 


56 


REFL EOT IONS Fit OM 


tion, were regarded with jealousy by the kings, who 
seized the control of them, and in instances perverted 
them to the most violent purposes. 

In the thirteenth century, there was erected in 
Spain, an institution called the “ Inquisition ”; it had 
the sanction of the Pope Innocent III., a who sur¬ 
passed all the men of merit of his day.” It was 
exercised for the ordering of the Church, by its own 
internal government, and resisted the interference of 
kings and their claim to absolute power. In a 
sermon delivered by Fra. Diego de Chaves, at Madrid, 
he said that “ Kings had an absolute power over the 
persons of their subjects as over their property.” (It 
was in this and the preceding age that the Ghibelline 
Cmsarism was taught from the Pandects, by the 
jurists of Bologna throughout Europe, and by Vacu- 
rius at Oxford, who had been brought over by the 
civilian, Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
was resisted in the struggle between Stephen and the 
Empress Matilda, and between Becket and Henry II. 

Henry III. ratified the Magna Charta, “ and in his 
reign was developed the counterpoise of a ministry, 
dependent upon the representatives of the communi¬ 
ties, to the royal and aristocratic forces, which after¬ 
wards became harmonized in the British Parliament.” 
His Chief Justice, Bracton, who refers always to Jus¬ 
tinian, is quoted by Blackstone as saying: “ Rex est 
vicar ius, et minister Dei in terra: omnis quidem sub eo 
est , ipse sub nullo , nisi tantum sub Deo ; ” but he adds: 
“Ipse autem rex non debet esse sub homine, sed sub Deo 


MY NOTE BOOK, 


57 


et sub lege , quia lex facit regem . Attribuat igitur rex 
legi quod lex attribuit ei, videlicet dominationem et potes- 
tatem, non est enim rex, ubi dominatur voluntas et non 
lexT Bl. Com., vol. i., 242. The preacher was con¬ 
demned by the Inquisition to retract what he had 
said, publicly, in the same place, and with all the cir¬ 
cumstances of a judicial act, which he did, in the same 
pulpit, saying: u Kings have no other power over 
their subjects than what is given by the divine and 
human law; they have none proceeding from their 
own free and absolute will.” 

The Inquisition urged the same restraints upon 
royal authority, and for the same reason given by 
Chief Justice Bracton, and by the friends of liberty in 
England, who secured these restraints by a ministry 
under the control of the commons. The Inquisition 
resisted the establishment of a religious despotism by 
the king, assisted by a portion of the clergy. The 
Kings of Spain afterward got control of the Inquisi¬ 
tion, against all the influence of the Pope, and ap¬ 
pointed all its officers, when it became a court for 
punishment and the instrument of their power, and 
when the Popes became a refuge of protection for its 
victims who might escape. 

Kings and emperors, calling themselves Catholic, 
have perverted parliaments, courts, juries and bishops, 
into the instruments of their tyranny; and the firm 
protests of the Popes have been regarded as so many 
instances of their ambition, and the outrages them¬ 
selves as evidences of the cruelty of the Church. They 


58 


11EFLEC T1 ONS Fli OM 


have laid violent hands upon the Popes themselves, 
have stripped them of their possessions, slain them, 
and raised up anti-Popes. Still Divine Providence 
wonderfully and inscrutably governed the Papacy with 
an almighty arm, and its faith has never failed. 

Mr. Macauley says: “ When we reflect on the tre¬ 
mendous assaults which the Papacy has sustained, we 
find it difficult to conceive in what way she is to 
perish.’ 7 

“The Papacy, 7 ’ says Voltaire, “ restrained the 
licentiousness of the powerful, protected the people, 
and put an end to quarrels of the times, and hurled 
anathemas at those enormities they could not prevent. 7 ’ 
He says that the Papacy, in the Middle Ages, was 
opinion. It was an opinion that awakened all ideas 
of religion, science, government and art, “and in it 
was concentrated the splendor of their perfection. 77 It 
disclosed the nature of obligations in the relations of 
society, and gave a moral power to authority. It 
raised up woman from degradation, and exalted her 
virtues at the shrine of the Mother of God, “ and built 
and fortified in the heart the port of home. 77 

Philip Augustus, one of the ablest of French mon- 
archs, repudiated his wife for a woman of his court. 
“ Take back your wife, 77 says the Pope. “What juris¬ 
diction have you here? 77 replied the king. “My 
jurisdiction extends as far as crime, 77 retorted Innocent 
III. The king and his subjects were members of 
the Catholic Church, and the latter, without any vio¬ 
lence, shrank from the king as tainted, when he 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


59 


expelled the harlot and took back his wife, and com¬ 
mended her virtues at his death, as of his “ beloved 
wife.” 

Here was faith and opinion expressed from the 
center of Christian correspondence, and understood 
among the subjects of the king, that cherished and 
protected the virtuous matron as one of whom the 
Lord had said: “ They are My mothers and My sis¬ 
ters, who keep My commandments.” “ And he that is 
greatest among you shall be your servant.” Matt, 
xxiii., 11. 

The Pope is the servant of servants, and his moral 
power is subject to all for their protection even the 
humblest. The law of God being universal and 
unchanging, “infallibility ” binds him to the prece¬ 
dents of all ages, and he cannot distinguish nations, 
nor individuals, nor times. He collects the sympa¬ 
thies of the whole Catholic body, and concentrates and 
directs them to the defense and protection of its 
feeblest members. 

Leo X. was the patron of science and art and the 
friend of every virtue. He gathered up from the 
ruins of Christian Imperialism, at Constantinople, its 
treasures of science, art, and literature, and establishep 
at Home a press to revive Greek studies in Christiau 
education. He collected around him the learned of 
the world, and sought to enlarge and strengthen the 
religious, moral, and intellectual forces, the general 
impulse of whose unity at Rome should shape the 
universe in peaceful, free, and perfect harmony. “ The 


60 


HEFLEC TIONS Eli OM 


Papacy,” says Darras, “ was surrounded by writers, 
historians, and artists, which made Leo’s reign one of 
the brightest periods in history, when the Papacy, as 
the Queen of the world, was controlling its intellec¬ 
tual movements, directing genius, and guiding science.” 

“ But see ! each muse in Leo’s golden days, 

Starts from her trance and trims her withered bays, 

Home’s ancient genius o’er its ruins spread, 

Shakes off the dust, and rears his reverend head. 

Then sculpture and her sister arts revive, 

Stones leaped to form, and rocks begin to live: 

With sweeter notes each rising temple rung ; 

A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.” —Pope. 

He interested the general charity to complete, by 
consecrated gifts, a temple where the nations might 
meet in unity with their peace offerings, and religion, 
science and art join in anthems of praise and thanks¬ 
giving to the God of Abraham. 

“ Majesty, 

Power, glory, strength, and beauty, all are aisled 
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.”— Byron. 


CHAPTER Y. 

Opposed, were the selfish, covetous, lustful, and 
ambitious, among kings and cardinals, lords and 
bishops, priests and people. “ With a genius for evil, 
Luther availed himself of the bad passions of all,” 
and, more licentious than the epicurean, he recon¬ 
ciled faith and the laws of God to the lusts and pas- 



MY NOTE BOOK. 


61 


sions of men, and did away with all obedience to 
ecclesiastical authority and with all self-denial.” 

“ The Landgrave of Hesse, having one wife, wanted 
another, and wrote to Luther and Melancthon, 
threatening, in case of their refusal, to return to 
Catholicism. After some deliberation, the Reformers 
consented to grant the Landgrave’s request, and signed 
the act to enable him, as they said, to promote the 
advantage of body and soul, and the greater glory of 
God: still, they suggested, as it is not now a usual 
thing to have two wives at once, we judge that the 
ceremony, should be performed privately, and in the 
presence of a few necessary witnesses (March 3, 1540). 
He enriched kings and nobles with the spoils of his 
mother church, and freed conscience from every moral 
obligation and every merit of virtuous action.” He 
opposed his private judgment to that of his church, 
and to give a remorseless edge to the sword he de¬ 
nounced, as abandoned by God and sofd to Satan, 
whole communities who differed from himself. Under 
the name of liberty, he inflamed the licentiousness of 
the people, and then turned loose upon them the 
unbridled fury of princes for their destruction. He 
wrote to the Prince of Hesse respecting the “ Anabap¬ 
tists”: “While there remains,” says he, “a drop of 
blood in your veins, hunt those rebellious peasants like 
wild beasts; kill them like mad dogs; they are sold, 
body and soul, to Satan.” 

“ He collected apostles from all conditions, with all 
past heresies, into the grand pandemonium of Protes- 


62 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


tantism, of which he was the center, the representative, 
and the reflector.” 

With the pretext and subtleties of a former guile, 
the adversary came, as a prophet just from God, to 
seduce the reason and free will of man from the in¬ 
struction of the Church of God, and he perverted their 
institutions of liberty and peace into oracles of ambi¬ 
tion, lust, pride, and cruelty, “and drew away the 
third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the 
earth.” 

Kings denied the authority of the Church of God, 
and made their own wills His oracles to enslave the 
people. Parliaments disputed the authority of both 
Church and kings. Constituencies instructed parlia¬ 
ments, and the subject derided the authority of the 
governing relations ; and, in the blindness and perver¬ 
sion of reason, the unity of Christ was dissolved into 
a Christian polytheism of warring gods, sects, and 
nations. 


CHAPTER VI. 

After the nations had been oppressed by the 
tyranny, and their reason had been debauched by the 
licentiousness of Protestantism, there was left no way 
of escape but by returning to the institutions which 
the Church had instructed them to establish, as the 
foundations of their societies. 

“ Whatever may be denied to her now or hereafter, 
the most profound jurists and most learned historians, 



MY NOTE BOOK. 


63 


many of whom were unfriendly to her faith, have 
admitted that the instructions of the Church laid the 
foundations of modern Christian societies, when all 
other organizations, like the virgins with wasted lamps, 
had disappeared in the darkness of the Middle Ages. 
Almost every principle of their laws may be traced 
back to her patient and suffering instructions.” See 
Reeve’s History of the C. L. 

M. Guizot says: “That the barbarian customs 
had all been swept away, and were substituted by 
those taught and gradually introduced by the Church.” 
Our Lord established His Church as the ground and 
pillar of truth, commissioned its ministers to teach all 
nations, and commanded all to obey it. The Church 
soon supplanted paganism in the Roman Empire, in¬ 
cluding Britain. During a struggle of more than a 
century with the Saxon invaders, the portion of the 
Church in England was detached from its head, and 
soon lost among the myths of the Welsh mountains; 
but the Saxon barbarians received St. Austin, at the 
beginning of the seventh century, who instructed them 
in the laws of Roman Catholic Christianity, and bar¬ 
barian violence slowly yielded to Christian customs 
under almost infinite varieties of local consent. 

The Saxon king,.Alfred, who had been educated at 
Rome, “ found the local customs of the several pro¬ 
vinces of his kingdom had grown so various that he 
had compiled his Dome Book for the use of the whole 
kingdom. The Mercian laws, the West Saxon laws, 
the Danish laws, became mixed up with these laws of 


64 


REEL EC T1ONS Eli OM 


Alfred. Out of the three, Edward the Confessor ex¬ 
tracted one uniform law, or Digest of laws, to be 
observed throughout the whole kingdom. 1 A general 
Digest of the same nature/ says Mr. Blackstone, 1 has 
been constantly found expedient, and therefore put in 
practice by other nations which were formed of little 
provinces, governed by peculiar customs, as in Portu¬ 
gal, under King Edward, about the beginning of the 
fifteenth century ; in Spain, under Alonzo X., who 
collected all the particular customs into one uniform 
law in the celebrated code entitled Les Partidas; 
and in Sweden, about the same time when a universal 
body of common law was compiled out of the par¬ 
ticular customs of every province, being analogous to 
the common law of England.’ ” Bl. Com., vol. i., 44. 

Speaking of the Dome Book of Alfred and the 
Digest of Edward the Confessor, Mr. Blackstone says: 
a These were the Saxon customs that were so strenu¬ 
ously insisted upon after the Norman Conquest against 
the claims of absolute authority by the Norman Kings. 
That ancient collection of unwritten maxims and cus¬ 
toms, which is called the Common Law, had, in a great 
measure, survived the rude shock of the Norman Con¬ 
quest. This had endeared it to the people. In the 
knowledge of this law consisted a great part of the 
learning of those ages. It was mostly studied in the 
monasteries ; and the clergy, particularly, were pecu¬ 
liarly remarkable for proficiency in this law. The 
judges were created out of the sacred order, and the 
inferior offices were supplied by the lower clergy.” 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


65 


Instead of the Roman judices, and in their simili¬ 
tude, juries were, at an early date, established in 
England as the most protective institution of customs, 
of personal liberty, and of property. The number 12 
indicates a preference for Jewish and Christian sym¬ 
bols of liberty and justice. They combined variety 
in unity, and contemplated all questions in issue 
through every variety of interest; and the juries took 
an oath to decide, not according to the will of the 
king, but according to the law of the layid. 

Mr. Blackstone says that “it is a maxim of the 
English law that “Rex debet essse sub lege , quia lex fecit 
regem ” “ The imperial law,” he says, “will tell us that 
( in omnibus imperatoris excepitur for tuna, cui ipsas 
leges Deus subjecit.’ ” Nov. 105, sec. 2. Bl. Com., 
vol. i., sec. 238-9. “But whatever,” continues Mr. 
Blackstone, “ might be the sentiments of some of our 
princes, this was never the language of our ancient 
constitution and laws. The limitation of the royal 
authority was a first and essential principle of all the 
Gothic systems of government established in Europe, 
though driven out by chicane and violence in most of 
the kingdoms on the continent.” 

Those contests that have been referred to the ambi¬ 
tion of the Church and Popes, were, in every instance, 
in defence of the principles of the constitution. 

The great underlying principle in the instructions 
of the Church was the free will of man, constructing 
social institutions and developing a social nature 
conformable to the laws of God, which was a necces- 
sary limitation on the royal authority. e 


66 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


To carry out his arbitrary measures, and to depress 
the power of the Church, which we have seen taught, 
administered, and protected the Saxon customs or 
common law which had survived the Norman Conquest 
and which also taught a restraint on the royal 
authority, the Norman king, Henry II., assuming the 
right of investures which belonged to the Church, 
appointed his friend and trusted chancellor, Thomas 
a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and set up his 
constitutions of Clarendon. The head of the Church 
at that time was Alexander III., “who,” Voltaire said, 
“revived the rights of the people, and repressed the 
crimes of kings.” Upon the representations of the 
Pope, Becket withdrew his support from these consti¬ 
tutions, and placed himself, with the firmness of a 
martyr, against all encroachments on the liberties of 
the Church, which meant also those of the people, as 
it was the only representative of their rights and 
organ of their expression; and the effect of these 
constitutions was to depress the powers and liberties 
of both. 

Becket was murdered by the assassins of Henry, in 
his vestments at the altar of his cathedral church, 
and was afterwards canonized by Pope Alexander III; 
and St. Thomas of Canterbury became the apostle 
and martyr of liberty throughout Europe. The people 
from every quarter visited his grave, and there 
imbibed that knowledge and love of liberty that has 
so often manifested itself in resistance to arbitrary 
power, and which has caused Englishmen to adhere, 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


67 


through all vicissitudes, to the principles of their 
ancient constitution ; and St. Thomas of Canterbury, 
in his cathederal near the altar of St. Bennet, ever 
lives in the love of liberty and magnanimous loyalty, 
that are reflected from the British Constitution and 
from the common law. 

The history of the rise and progress of modern society 
discloses the patient labor of the Church, through ages 
of suffering, to supplant despotism by liberty, and 
barbarous custom by Christian civilization; carrying 
along with it, and protecting the laws, literature, 
science and arts of Grecian and Roman civilization. 
The Reformation came, and offered unlimited power, 
self-indulgence, and the property of the Church, and 
declared her the enemy of the institutions she had 
suffered and labored so long to establish. 

' In England, Henry VIII., for the purpose of 
divorcing his wife and marrying another, threw off 
the mild central control of the Church, slew its faith¬ 
ful ministers, plundered its monasteries and destroyed 
their vast libraries, confiscated its property, organized 
the timid and treacherous into the church of his will, 
and had himself declared head of this Church of Eng¬ 
land, and concentrated in himself the characteristics 
of every tyrant "that ever lived. He unburied the 
bones of Becket, and scattered them to the winds. He 
perverted the courts into instruments of his tyranny, 
and brought the heads of the Chancellor More and the 
virtuous Fisher to the block, and degraded parliament 
into the obsequious tool of his passions. He robbed 


68 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


the poor, by confiscating the monasteries, and it is said 
that he executed more than 70,000 persons whom he 
had robbed, mainly for crimes to prevent starvation. 

After the death of Henry, the protector seized on 
what had been left of the property of the Church, and 
divided it among his family and friends. 

Parliament conferred on Edward VI., the successor 
of Henry VIII., the power of Augustus, or Ccesar 
Hivus. By act of parliament, “the king is recognized 
to have always been, by the Word of God, supreme 
head of the Church of England, and acknowledged that 
archbishops, bishops, and other ecclesiastics had no 
manner of jurisdiction but by his royal mandate. To 
him alone, and to such persons as he may appoint, full 
power is given from above, to hear and determine all 
manner of heresies, errors, vices and sins, whatever.” 
What did this parliament say when this power de¬ 
scended to Mary, and to Elizabeth, her successor ? 
The persecutions by the ministers of Mary were by 
the authority of this act of a Protestant parliament, 
and against the advice of Pome. 

Mr. Blackstone says : “ The glorious Queen Eliza¬ 
beth herself made no scruple to direct her parliament 
to abstain from discoursing of matters of State; and 
her successor, James I., who had imbibed high notions 
of the divinity of regal sway, more than once laid it 
down in his speeches that, as it is atheism and blas¬ 
phemy in a creature to dispute what a Deity may do, 
so it is presumption and sedition in a subject to dispute 
.what a king may do in the height of his power.” 


69 


MY MOTE BOOK. 

\ 

“Good Christians/’ he adds, “ will be content with 
God’s will revealed in His word ; and good subjects will 
rest in the king’s will revealed in his law.” 

We see in England the faith of different kings and 
queens conflicting, and that of parliament with the 
faith of both. In Cromwell’s time the parliament 
constituted itself the judge of the king, dethroned him, 
and brought his head to the block, and then changed 
again the religion of the State, when there was no king 
nor queen, and consequently no head of the Church. 

The power to construe the divine law having been 
denied by the kings to the proper organs of the Church 
of Christ, and assumed to themselves, was then denied 
by parliaments to the kings, and assumed to them¬ 
selves. It came, afterwards, to be discussed by indi¬ 
viduals (as their right of constituency), which soon 
led to political convulsions and social strife, which 
have been compared to the bloodiest persecution of 
paganism; “of Christians being persecuted in the 
skins of wild beasts, to wild beasts persecuting in the 
skins of Christians.” 

A court of inquisition had been established to 
restrain abuses in the administration of justice. It 
was subjected by the king, and became, in Protestant 
England, a court of torture and the political institu¬ 
tion of the Star Chamber. Yet a court of chancery, 
having the same power to enforce confession by im¬ 
prisonment, is an organization essential to the adminis¬ 
tration of justice, in a free and well regulated gov¬ 
ernment. Parliaments, courts, and even juries, have 


70 


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been perverted by the arbitrary power of kings, yet, 
in their contemplated spheres, they are the most 
efficient guards of life, property and liberty. 

Magna Charta, the Corroborating Statutes, the 
Petition of Right under Charles I., the Bill of Rights 
under William and Mary, the Act of Parliament and 
the Act of Settlement, recognize, all and singular, the 
rights asserted to “ be the true, ancient and indubit¬ 
able rights of the people of the kingdom of Great 
Britain, and declare them to be the birthright of 
Englishmen, according to the ancient doctrine of the 
common law.” These conventional checks onlv 
restored what had been introduced under the direction 
of the Church ; but which had been perverted by the 
chicane and violence of kings. 

This is the Church’s own law, which she has taught 
and which she cannot violate, or teach others to vio¬ 
late. She requires those who govern to obey it, when 
she clothes them with power and sanctity and author¬ 
ity ; and they become the fountains of honor, and can 
do no wrono;. 

“ Nunquam libertas gratior extat 
Quam sub rege pio.” 

Since the ancient principles of the British Constitu¬ 
tion have been restored, and, as they now protest 
themselves to be the birthright of Englishmen, and a 
part of their ancient common law, let us see a Protest¬ 
ant’s view of the regal power moving in the environ¬ 
ments of this common law. Mr. Gladstone says: 
u The name of the Queen of England was the symbol. 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


71 


and her office, the fountain of all lawful powers. 
There is a power exercised in the ordinary relations 
of life, and greatly through the conventionalities and 
hospitalities of a court; whence the august functions 
of the crown are irradiated by intelligence and virtue; 
they are transformed into a higher dignity than words 
can fully convey or acts of parliament can give. The 
true test of the highest social distinction in England is 
nearness to the monarch. Those who come within the 
magic circle were persons, every one of whom was, 
more or less, himself a power. The heads of the pro¬ 
fessions, the leaders of parliament, the patriarchs of 
letters, the chiefs of arts, and the aristocracy of the 
land, themselves, having the double title of inherita¬ 
ble station and high personal distinction : And even 
in dealing with these distinguished orders of men, a 
principle of selection was not forgotten. Thus the 
whole force of royal authority was given for good and 
in the most efficacious manner.” 

It seems, to my recollection, that, shortly after the 
accession of the queen to the throne, she had occasion 
to speak in regard to a barbarous custom that still lin¬ 
gered, in spite of the legislative and executive power 
of the country. She denounced her indignation against 
the practice of duelling. Since then it has fallen from 
the respects of society, and not an instance, that I have 
heard of, has since occurred. The Code of Honor 
ceased to be honorable, and its worshippers sank at 
once to the common sink of assassins. Here we have 
the voice of a woman impressing millions by a moral 


72 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


power stronger than that of force. What Englishman 
would think of exchanging the mild constitutional 
government of Victoria for the unbridled fury of 
Elizabeth in her lust, and in her rage for blood; or, 
who is it that speaks the English language that would 
not rise to drive from her presence the representative 
of French politics and philosophy, reproaching, in 
tears, the lover of his mistress, then the wife of another ? 
“ Eh ! mon Bieu ! Monsieur , de quoi vous avisiez-vous de 
lui faire un enfant f ” 

The Queen of England is the head of the Church of 
England, and is sworn to defend that of Scotland. 
Her crown cannot reflect on either the light of the 
other. Its Catholicity represents the religion and en¬ 
larged nationality of Ireland, and reflects the moral 
power of the English Constitution on all subjects, for 
just relations with each other, with their country and 
with the world ; and is the truest political expression 
of Roman Catholic civilization and liberty, and the 
most just and comprehensive form of political power 
on the globe. 

“That nation,” says Froude, “is the most free, 
where the laws, by whomsoever framed, correspond 
most nearly with the will of the Maker of the uni¬ 
verse, by whom, and not by human suffrage, the code 
of rules is laid down for our obedience. That nation 
is most a slave that has ceased to believe in such laws.” 

The spirit of perfect council, that belongs to the 
church, does not concern itself about names, whether 
of monarch or president, but regards and instructs the 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


73 


voluntary forces of every variety, for just relations for 
universal eoadjutation in the development and happi¬ 
ness of all. Where universal harmony prevails, all is 
truth, liberty and peace, and the esssential force of 
just relations banishes tyranny and enlarges the indi¬ 
vidual in its perfect correspondences. 

The civilization of Christian nations, though per¬ 
verted, is Roman Catholic. Its appetences for broader 
correspondences, and for more comprehensive chari¬ 
ties, and for more enlarged justice, in the relations of 
persons and things, have grown out of the spirit that has 
constantly directed all her teachings to the unity of 
mankind ; and, by a comparison with these nations, one 
with another, the greater development will be found 
to have resulted from the stricter adherence to princi¬ 
ples she taught; although she herself may have been 
plundered, cast out and disowned. 

The same may be said of infidels, communists, and 
sectarians, who have grown up under the developing 
power of States and institutions founded by the very 
Catholicism they seem to dread so much. All just 
ideas of morals proceed directly from Catholicism, or 
are indirectly reflected from institutions she had estab¬ 
lished. Honor, truth and liberty are perfect only in 
her ways, which are those of peace. 

Says Montesquieu, “La nature de Vhonneur ed d’avoir 
tout Vuniverse pour censeur 

“ An English political reformer and member of 
parliament, writing to the Pope of Rome, confesses his 
shame for having been, for fifty-two years of his life, a 


74 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


reviler of the religion of his fathers; of that religion 
which fed the poor out of the tithes and other resour¬ 
ces of the Church ; of that religion which had inspired 
piety and generosity to erect every edifice, now 
remaining in the country, worth the trouble of 
walking a hundred yards to see, and had created 
every seminary of learning, and caused to be enacted 
every law, and to be founded every institution of 
which England had a right to be proud.” Wm. 
Cobbett’s Letter to Pius VIII.—Invitation Heeded. 

“ England/’ says Blackstone, “ preserved the prin¬ 
ciples of her ancient constitution, whilst the nations of 
Europe were cheated out of theirs by violence and 
chicane/’ and he tells us by whom these laws were 
taught in England. “ They were taught/’ says he, “ by 
monks, in the monasteries, and administered by the 
clergy, on the bench and at the bar;” and all the 
conventional checks to power, and in aid of liberty, 
made since the change of religion in England, profess 
expressly to be derived from her ancient constitution. 


CHAPTER VII. 

The United States were, originally, separate com¬ 
munities, that derived their rights and existences from 
royal charters, based upon the principles of the common 
law, and having representative governments. These 
charters were in the nature of contracts between the 
crown and parliament on one side, and these communi- 



MY NOTE BOOK. 


75 


ties on the other; and were liberally construed for 
enlarging the powers of the latter for local means of 
defence and development. 

The spirit of self-reliance shaped the growth of 
these communities; and in an attempt to enforce the 
government of the crown and parliament, they con¬ 
federated together, complained of encroachments upon 
their equal rights as citizens and communities, and 
declared themselves independent. 

“Each specially organized its government by a 
written constitution, conforming mainly to the prin¬ 
ciples of its former charter/’ and adopted the whole 
body of the common law. 

By withdrawing from the parent country, these 
organizations were naturally incomplete, and all pow¬ 
ers were left in the hands of majorities of electors; and 
the checking power became the governing power, and 
was absolute. 

By a written constitution, the people of the States, 
having their independent representative governments, 
established a co-ordinate general government, and 
provided for the election of a president and congress, 
in the place of the king and parliament, by majori¬ 
ties of qualified electors. 

The president represents the same elective opinion, 
in an executive form, that congress does in a legisla¬ 
tive form, and is elected for its mean term of four 
years. 

As ratified by the unanimous voice of the conven¬ 
tion, the constitution is construed with equal regard 


76 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


for the rights of all, by judges who are appointed for 
life, by the president, and confirmed by the senate; 
and who become, by constitutional sanction, the organs 
of the entire people, and not of a majority of electors, 
which is generally not the one-tentli part of the people 
whose rights are to be affected. 

The received opinion that regards numerical majori¬ 
ties as the basis and sanction of constitutions, and 
governments perverts, in its exercise, their construction 
and application to the purposes of such majorities. 
The ruling power is justly exercised in relations of 
equal responsibility to all, and, whether by kings or 
presidents, should be restrained and limited in refer¬ 
ence to their equal rights ; else the government, instead 
of a constitutional government, becomes a despotism. 

By the practical working of the constitution, the 
president is the successful of two candidates, who 
represent the whole country, divided into two organiza¬ 
tions, each continually struggling to destroy the moral 
force of the other. The opinions of the variable and 
fluctuating portions of society become the ruling points 
of contest, and by means that appeal to ignorance, 
prejudice, and folly. Their conflicts absorb all others, 
and are reflected through all organizations, and through 
degrading combinations, for preference in the same 
party. The moral powers of the States become con¬ 
flicting with each other, and with those of the union. 
The peace of relations become disturbed, when nothing 
remains to harmonize or to heal. But the con¬ 
stitution did not interfere with the common law 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


77 


which has been adopted by congress and all the 
States. 

The Congress of 1774 unanimously resolved, that 
“ the respective colonies are entitled to the common 
law of England.” The congress also resolved, that 
“their ancestors, at the time of their immigration, 
were entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immuni¬ 
ties of free and natural born subjects of the realm of 
England.” 

Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Con¬ 
stitution, says : “ The universal principle (and the 
practice has conformed to it), has been, that the com¬ 
mon law is our birth-right and inheritance, and that 
our ancestors brought hither with them, all of it, 
which was applicable to their situation. The whole 
structure of our jurisprudence stands upon the original 
foundation of the common law.” 

This common law contemplates a general govern¬ 
ment of States, that possesses no faculties to force 

them, or to interfere with their local institutions, but 
♦ 

which seeks to unite them, peacefully, by the enlarged 
principles of natural equity, and the moral force of 
united communities. 

On the 2d April, 1649, the General Assembly of 
Catholic Maryland passed an act to the effect that 
“ no person shall hereafter be molested in the exercise 
of his religious belief;” the spirit of which was 
adopted in the Constitution of the United States, 
which left the common law the comprehensive form of 
moral and religious instruction and restraint. 


78 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


The founders of the constitution denied the right 
of a religious government, but u adopted its conclu¬ 
sions in fixing the maxims of the common law.” 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Fkom the suggestive order of the universe, reason 
raised altars to God, the Creater and Governor of all 
things ; and instituted oracles with a chief priest for 
directions to live according to His laws. Those laws 
were universal, immutable, and eternal. The social 
growth into families, societies, and nations, brought 
man into more intimate relations with these laws, and 
into preconsideration of perfect social harmony in the 
universal government of God. “ No human laws 
were of any validity if contrary to these laws of God, 
and such as were valid derived all their force and 
authority from them.” 

Sophocles makes Antigone say to Creon, King of 
Thebes, “ I did not believe that the edicts of a mortal 
man, as you are, should supersede the laws of God, 
laws not written, but certain and immutable. I ought 
not, for the fear of any man, to expose myself to the 
punishment of God.” GEdipus. 

Socrates taught, from the nature of things, the 
relations between God and man ; and by definition and 
induction, the method of reason to apply the laws of 
God to the exigencies of men. His wisdom was reflected, 
with the philosophy of Aristotle and the stoics, in 





MY NOTE BOOK. 


79 


the comprehensive order and natural justice of Roman 
jurisprudence. Cicero said, “Socrates brought down 
philosophy from heaven to earth.” 

“ All laws,” said Demosthenes, “are the invention 
and gift of heaven, and the general compact of the 
State; to live in conformity with which is the dutv of 
every individual of society.” 

Cicero gave a divine origin to laws, and perfected 
human laws in a universal government of God. 

Phillimore calls the Roman law a covenant between 
earth and heaven; and we have seen that the reason 
of the free oracles of Rome applied the natural laws of 
God, and extended her government over the world. 

Skepticism and epicureanism came, and private in¬ 
terpretation converted the physico-allegorical theogony 
of paganism into innumerable stimulating licenses of 
lust and passion, and separated human laws from all 
concern for God. Reason became arrogant, and de¬ 
nounced the fear of God as degrading to men. The 
Jaws of nature were violated and licentiousness per¬ 
verted the natural affections and dissolved the bonds 
of society, and men fled from its hideous shade, for 
protection, to a deified Emperor. 

Then Christianity came and raised up the broken 
altars of reason, and restored liberty, laws, art, science 
and philosophy, and taught all the world, that, when 
man refused to obey the will of God, “his reason 
became obscure and corrupt, and his understanding 
full of ignorance and error;” and, that, in compas¬ 
sion for the blindness of reason, God had sent His own 


80 


REFLECTIONS VROM 


Son, who revealed His government, and commanded it 
to instruct reason and teach all nations. 

Reason, instructed by this government, has applied 
the laws of God by an infinite variety of establish¬ 
ments for the correspondence of the free will of man 
with the will of God. Mr. Blackstone says : “Upon 
the foundation of the laws of God, which are the laws 
of nature and revelation, depend all human laws.” 

The Church has elevated the divine law and reason 
into restraints upon despotic force. “With all your 
boast of omnipotence,” said Lord Chancellor Camden, 
in a discussion on the Stamp Act, in the House of 
Lords, “ there is one thing you cannot do, you cannot 
repeal a divine law;” and power and authority are 
conferred, sanctioned, and restrained by invocations to 
God as the source of all obligation. In courts of jus¬ 
tice, judges are not obeyed, witnesses are not believed, 
and juries do not decide, without His sanction to these 
obligations. 

“Let it be simply asked,” says Washington, in his 
farewell address, “where is the security for property, 
for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obli¬ 
gation desert the oaths which are the instruments of 
investigation in courts of justice? Of all the dispo¬ 
sitions and habits which lead to political prosperity, 
morality and religion are indispensable supports; and 
let us, with caution, indulge the supposition that 
morality can be maintained without religion.” 

A law of marriage that should disregard religion, 
or nature, or the free will of the parties, would have 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


81 


no spirit of fidelity to attach or restrain, and the civil 
effects would produce fraud, discord, and violence; 
but the laws of religion being respected, instructed 
reason discovers their beauty, and with the infinite 
variety of individual choice, builds the home, the essen¬ 
tial force of whose government is freedom, love, and 
peace. 

The Church bestows on all, who conform to her 
laws, her whole moral power of universal faith and 
opinion. From her central rock all things are ordered 
for justice and harmony, and to it impulses flow from 
the universe, and return with calming influences 
through relations enlarging like spreading circles upon 
the waters. 

As to the truths of philosophy, science and art, she 
does not speak as of faith and morals; but, from her 
central point of universal correspondence, they are 
gradually resolved by the visions of all eyes, and the 
relations of all interests and opinions; and she 
restrains her expressions till they are approved by the 
harmony of her vast correspondence. 

This Church claims a general directing power to 
teach all nations, to the end of the unity of mankind, 
and “ such is perfectly consistent with their indepen¬ 
dence.” 

She beholds the nations, whose sovereigns arc self- 
constituted oracles of God, and are constantly training 
millions of people to cut each others throats, their 
unsuccessful efforts at international congresses and 
umpires to settle differences without war; and sheseeks, 


82 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


as the oracle of reason and the divine law, to be 
recognized, as by the appointment of God, a compre¬ 
hensive organization for the development of all in her 
peaceful correspondence. 

She has no armies, nor navies, nor constabulary; 
she has no faculties for force, they all address the free 
will of man. She invites to self-government and 
self-discipline, that are her only instruments for cor¬ 
rection. She discloses the nature of obligations, whose 
essential force compose all for peaceful development. 
She alone has the comprehension for this develop¬ 
ment. Ranke says, “ Comprehension and unity are 
qualities to be found almost exclusively in the power 
of the Pope.” His. of the Popes, 25. 

“ All sciences and arts are- social, and seek their 
perfection in universal correspondence with the destiny 
of man,” and they can be exercised with liberty in 
the conditions alone of her correspondence. 

All relations and interests are wearied with dis¬ 
cords, licentiousness, and tyranny, and the conflicting 
judgments and opinions of monarchs, courts, societies, 
and individuals; and with war, its preparations, and 
cruelties; and the whole world is crying out for some 
central point for peaceful revolutions. 

The Church of God establishes peaceful correspon¬ 
dences between the laws of man and the laws of God, 
and from the centre of her unity there is reflected 
the image of the perfect social Man, who disposes all 
things for perfect development in the beauty and har¬ 
mony of His kingdom. 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


83 


“And the seventh angel sounded,” and there were 
great voices in heaven saying, “the kingdoms of this 
world have become the kingdom of our Lord, and ot 
His Christ, and He shall reign forever.” Rev. xi., 15. 
“And when He shall begin to sound, the mystery of 
God shall be finished, as He has declared to His 
servants, the prophets.” Rev. 






F>^AIETT TXTIIETID- 


CHAPTER I. 

“The world has infinite varieties which are capable 
of infinite combinations and modifications, by the 
industry of man, exerted individually or combined, 
and the products become property. The property of 
goods modifies the right which all men originally had 
to earthly goods. It distinguishes what belongs to 
individuals, and contributes to the support and main¬ 
tenance of peace and harmony among mankind. 
Being restrained and limited by human art, it becomes 
an adventitious state. The earth, then, becomes the 
fruitful source of products that become, by the industry 
of man, modified into infinite forms for his endless 
appliances, and are so economized and distributed by 
these adventitious social combinations, that the pro¬ 
ducts of the whole world, in all their varieties, arc 
ever present to feed, to clothe, and inform each and 
every individual. As the natural relations enlarge, 
and those purely adventitious multiply, the individual 
or selfish in man is more and more thrown off, and 
yields to the development of the universal social man. 
The feeble relations become more justly and kindly 
ruled, and, out of the milder government, the gentle 
and more pleasurable attachments are born and grow; 
and the government of reciprocal command and obe¬ 
dience becomes, in a universal form, a government cf 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


85 


mutual attachment and assistance: and a property in 
things becomes a property in the just relations of all 
men.” 

“ Each individual labors to accomplish something, 
or to make some product for which his district affords 
some advantage. This is converted into a product of 
universal value, suitable for exchange, and, through 
this medium, the products of every part of the globe 
are brought, at every moment, to his home.” 

Now, money is the universal medium, or common 
standard, by comparison with which the value of every 
commutable thing may be ascertained; or, it is a sign 
which represents the respective values of all com¬ 
modities, and a medium by which our moral and 
social nature is exercised and developed, and is the 
exponent of the laws which govern that nature. 

The precious metals have been preferred, because 
they have an intrinsic value for use and ornament; 
because they represent, in that of their production, a 
relative amount of labor with that of all other products; 
and because they can be easily reduced to the same stan¬ 
dard of all nations, and have been adopted by them. 

Capital comprehends the means for production. 
Product expresses that which is produced. Every 
piece of coin represents, to a relative extent, the 
universe of capital and production, and is not con¬ 
fined to any particular thing; and its value, as that 
of commodities, is variable according to the infinite 
variety of circumstances of demand and supply. 

“As the quantity of the precious metals,” says 


8G 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


Blackstone, “ increases, this universal medium, or com¬ 
mon sign, will sink in value and grow less precious, 
and, vice versa” 

The relative value of the precious metals with each 
other depends also on supply and demand. A few 
years ago, the amount of silver produced from the 
mines was supposed to be forty-five times that of gold, 
and the demand for silver was computed at three times 
that of gold, which reduced the value of gold to that 
of silver, to 45-3, or 15 to 1. 

Whoever builds or plants, or adds in any way to 
capital or products, whether material, moral or intel¬ 
lectual, or by any material or moral modification 
improves them, or enlarges or intensifies the demand 
for them, or helps to distribute them, becomes, to a 
proportional extent, a benefactor. He has created 
values which the circulation represents. Whoever can 
command a piece of coin, has received such increase 
to its value. 

As the exchange of money for capital and products, 
to a large extent, may be made by the repetition of 
the same money in exchange, it follows that the 
amount of money is small compared to the value of 
capital and products. It is estimated to be 1 to 40 
in some nations, and in others more or less. 

Prompt payment quickens the repetition and reduces 
the amount, and gives a greater value to money, and, 
in the absence of paper, the value of money in differ¬ 
ent States is differently modified by their laws for 
quick repetition. 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


87 


“ Supposing the capital of the United States to be 
16,000 millions,” says Perry, “ 400 millions would be 
the better medium of exchange by changing hands 
forty times, than 800 millions, changing hands twenty 
times. The quick movement of a little mass is better 
than the torpid movement of a big mass.” Perry, 
P. E., 218. But the same amount expresses double 
the value in the smaller circulation than in the larger, 
and, in all questions of costs, production is made at 
double the cost in the instance of the larger than in 
that of the smaller. 

“ The total amount of the circulating specie of Great 
Britain, before the establishment of the present paper 
system, was never placed by the highest estimates at 
more than forty-seven millions sterling; that is to say, 
about l-50th of her capital. Smith reckons it atnomore 
than eighteen millions, which could not be the 1 -127th 
part.” Say’s P. E., 14. “After the increase of paper 

circulation in England, all other commodities rose and 
the value of paper fell in proportion as every other 
commodity rose.” “The total of its value,” Mr. Say 
continues, “ never exceeded the amount of 1,280,000 
pounds of gold, because the business of circulating all 
the values of England required no larger value.” 
“ No government,” says he, “ has the power of increas¬ 
ing the total national money, otherwise than nomi¬ 
nally. The increased quantity of the whole reduces 
the value of every part, and, vice verso.” The com¬ 
parative value of money raised the circulation to that 
amount when below, and reduced it to that amount 


88 


REFLEC TJ OjVS VIi 0M 


when above, in order to a proper adjustment with 
other values, throughout the world. This being so, 
the remonitization of silver would not give a larger 
permanent circulation than before; one metal would 
supply the quantity as well as both, when there would 
be no fluctuations as between them. 

The just and natural amount and value of money 
would seem to depend upon the amount of capital and 
products; upon the amount of the precious metals 
produced, and of their consumption, which is com¬ 
puted at 3-5 of that produced ; upon the laws and 
other means for quick circulation ; upon the general 
morality, industry, and intelligence of the people, the 
extent and variety of their wants, the refinements of 
their civilization ; and upon the extent and freedom 
of their intercourse with the world. 

The general amount and value being determined, 
the amount possessed by individuals determines their 
relative wealth, which exercises the individual judg¬ 
ment in the means of acquisition without a due regard 
for the causes that flow from communities and enve 
value to money. 

Money being the representative of capital and pro¬ 
ducts, as its proportion decreases in a Slate, a given 
amount represents a larger proportion of capital and 
products, and is more valuable ; and as its proportion 
to capital and products increases, the same amount of 
money represents a smaller proportion of capital and 
products, and is less valuable. 

Should our wants for the varied products abroad be 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


89 


few and simple, and the production of our labor for 
foreign markets be extensive, or should there be an 
excess of our exports over our imports, then there 
would be with us an increased proportion of money to 
capital, and the amount received by the laborer would 
represent a proportionally smaller amount of stock 
and means for production ; home products would 
become depressed, and their least profitable varieties 
would fall away till the amounts produced would cor¬ 
respond with the amounts and varieties of our wants. 

Should our wants become more refined, varied, gen¬ 
eral and enlarged, the greater and more varied would 
be the demands for home products for exchange; and 
should our home products be insufficient, or, in other 
words, should there be an excess of our imports over 
our exports, the demand for our money would lessen 
its quantity, intensify its value, quicken its circulation, 
stimulate promptness and good faith for increased 
repetition, enlarge the amount of stock in the hands 
of the producer, and multiply the amount and variety 
of home products until they should correspond with 
home demands. When a given amount of money 
represents a larger proportion of capital and products, 
money has a greater capacity for all production, moral 
and material, and indicates a greater relative prosperity. 

The amount and variety of imported goods are the 
best evidence of national prosperity. They indicate 
the breadth and comprehension of our social existence ; 
and for its increasing demands, conditions an; revealed 
for adding value to money, activity to industry, fidelity 


90 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


to engagements, and variety to production. Govern¬ 
ments become social organizations for regulating the 
just disposition of things for broader correspondences, 
and the world a vast variety of organized relations for 
peaceful correspondence, by each individual, according 
to his merits, with all things perfected in the harmony 
of the universe. 


CHAPTER II. 

M. Guizot says that there are three types in every 
society: 

1st. Those who use capital without labor. 

2d. Those who labor with capital. 

3d. Those who labor without capital. 

Those who possess capital employ those who labor 
to create utilities for their wants; and, as these wants 
are comprehensive and agreeable to the laws of God 
and reason, they protect and elevate the laborers into 
broader correspondences, through which the wants 
and industries of men bring the products of the 
world to the enjoyment and developement of every 
one. The desire for a mansion provides materials, 
engages the architect to supply a plan for suitable 
conveniences, the carpenter, the mason and all neces¬ 
sary assistants to construct, prepare and adorn it—say, 
at a cost of $40,000. This mansion, in its use, suggests 
permanent demands, according to the taste of the 
owner; and to this end it is furnished, servants, 
employed, etc. These values are all expressed in the 



MY NOTE BOOK. 


91 


circulation; for one dollar represents them as as well 
another, and in a certain sense they become the 
property of everybody, as everybody’s dollar has a 
greater representative value than it had before the 
construction was made. The owner has been bene¬ 
fited : the builders have received $40,000; the 
destitute have found employment as servants; the 
immediate neighborhood, the town or city, the county, 
the State, and, indeed, the world, have this addition 
to their values. The wants of this single individual, 
without any loss to himself, have contributed more, 
perhaps, to the dependent relations of his immediate 
neighborhood than all the secret societies of brother¬ 
hoods put together within the same time. The 
increase of these individuals, and the variety of their 
wants, proportionally reflect demands that enlarge 
the general prosperity of the laborers; and thus all 
varieties of labor, religious, moral and intellectual, 
specially received contributions, and distribute the 
proceeds of their distinctive skill, and all with 
reference to principles of moral and intellectual selec¬ 
tions. For the convenience of supply and demand, 
central points attract accumulated products and labor, 
as cities, etc., where the industries of the world, in 
moving convolutions, supply each individual, at every 
moment, as from nature’s primitive garden of every 
variety. The rich occupy, naturally, relations of 
protection toward labor, and their adorning mantles 
suggest comfortable covering for the poor; for the 
money that was sent away to buy the former, by 


92 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


leaving a more intense circulation at home, imparted 
a value to that in the pockets of the laborers to buy 
the latter; and an intelligent consideration of the 
dependency and harmony between their interests is 
important for justice and for the peace of society. 

Individuals form prejudices from circumstances of 
social exclusion. The shoemaker might object to the 
mansion, equipage and fine apparel, etc., of the rich, but 
he would not object to his fine boots; nor would the 
tailor, to his fine clothes; nor the carpenter, to his fine 
mansion. By an enlarged view, their prejudices dis¬ 
appear, and the owner is regarded as a social compre¬ 
hension, that reflects protection on them all, in a 
society of their own, and as a natural representative, 
when he gathers about him, for hospitality or orna¬ 
ment, the products of other lands, whereby he imparts 
a higher value to their money and labor, and becomes 
the medium of their correspondence with the perfect¬ 
ing generalization of the world. 

But if, instead of social harmony, they should attempt 
social equality, as of modern communes and brother¬ 
hoods, and the class that possess capital and leisure 
should regulate their wants and demands according to 
the social forms of those who labor without capital, 
then capital would cease to be protective, and capital 
and labor would sink together in ignorance and bar¬ 
barism, and human life proportionally waste. 

The attempt of the laboring classes to conform to 
the protective requirements of the rich would imme¬ 
diately consume them. Semele would have Jupiter 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


93 


to visit her in his majesty, and she was consumed 
when he appeared. 

Social harmony expresses the conditions of social 
charity and development, and is consistent with the 
tenderest concern for the just rights of all individuals 
and classes. The natural energy of this harmony is 
continually urging every one to acquire and advance; 
and, as he prospers, a just social organization forces 
him into more protective relations, or degrades him. 
Hence, individuals become the property of each other, 
and nations become the property of individuals and 
nations; and they are valuable as they become more 
prosperous, and more free and open in their inter¬ 
course with all. 

As a general rule, the trade between nations is con¬ 
ducted by exchange. Should there be a balance in 
favor of either, paid in money, its increase would 
raise, at home, the price of commodities and propor¬ 
tionally the cost of production. All evidences of 
debt, salaries, wages, etc., and the prices of shipping 
and of products sold abroad, would not advance in 
price, and would, therefore, have relatively a lower 
value. The lower cost abroad would necessarily pro¬ 
duce cheaper goods, when the circulation would flow 
there to buy them, till an equilibrium was restored 
upon the basis of just amounts and values. 

If the home circulation were 800 millions, and to 
restore such equilibrium 400 millions wore sent off, 
the remaining 400 millions would express the same 
representative value as the 800 millions; and every 


94 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


dollar, engaged in production and consumption, would 
have double the value in the latter as in the former 
instance. If a portion of the 400 millions were sent 
off for such products as might be produced at home, it 
would express the amount and variety of home 
demands diverted from the least profitable varieties of 
home production on account of its higher cost, in 
order to reduce the home cost of general production, 
and to restore a profitable basis to home labor. If a 
portion were sent off for varieties that could not be 
produced at home, say for luxuries, by the wealthy, 
there would be no less money in the hands of the 
laborers, but there would be a greater value imparted 
to it, not only for production, but for development in 
harmony with all the means of social improvement. 
If a portion were exchanged for machinery, or for 
means for constructing general improvements, or for 
such as liberalize the feelings and enlarge the social 
demands for circulation, not only would the circula¬ 
tion be reduced, but there would be a larger propor¬ 
tion of capital, and a greater demand to give the 
reduced circulation a still greater representative value. 
If a portion were obtained by the forcible demands 
or fraud of other nations, or by tariffs imposed by 
the home government, the corrective force of universal 
relations would subject all parties to compensating 
conditions for restoring just relations between them. 

France paid Prussia five milliards for peace. France 
lost no values, but a portion of their representative. 
The circulation that remained represented the same 


A1Y NOTE BOOK. 


95 


values as the former. The wages of the laborers had 
a much greater value than before, which disposed them 
peacefully in their relations to their government. 
The lower cost of production infused activity and 
energy in every department of labor and enterprise. 
The increased amount of money in Prussia represented 
only the same values of the former circulation. The 
cost of production in Prussia became greater than that 
in France, in the compound ratio of the increase of 
circulation in the former and its decrease in the latter. 
The production of the latter was stimulated, whilst 
that of the former was depressed. “The blessed mil¬ 
liards (milliarden segeri) ! ” exclaimed Prussia when 
she first got the money, “the damned milliards ( mil¬ 
liarden flunk ), after it had inflated her circulation.” 
Had Prussia expended the money in the construction 
of institutions and public enterprises, or sent it abroad 
for machinery, etc., she would have increased her 
capital at home, and enlarged her demands to corres¬ 
pond with the increase. She, however, demonetized 
silver when it lost its value as money. Similar effects 
would result from measures for increasing home circu¬ 
lation, and lessening that of foreign nations, as by 
tariffs, etc. 

Wo have borrowed vast sums from abroad to con¬ 
struct railroads, etc. By the average of all of our 
enterprises thus built, the permanent value given to 
money, had it not been depreciated by paper, would 
far more than compensate for the increased amount 
from abroad • and the money sent abroad would lessen 


96 


R EFL E V1 7 ONS FR OM 


our circulation and enlarge the foreign, with better 
conditions for our competition in the markets of the 
world. Such payments might be made in the increase 
of our products as an element of exchange, instead of 
purchasing goods in competition with our own, or by 
money from taxes on larger incomes or property 
when a corresponding greater value would be imparted 
to the circulation that remained, without diminishing 
the amount in the hands of the laborer. The advanced 
value of property and money, by the investment, was 
the consideration contemplated when the money was 
borrowed, which is every day realized by property- 
holders, and for which they do not feel inclined to pay 
to those the profits of whose money they arc constantly 
receiving. 

If home demands were generally diffused through 
all portions and conditions of society, the growth and 
prosperity of all would respond in just relations. If 
home demands were partially diffused and insufficient 
to set off the forced production of a portion of society 
for foreign markets, then the labor of such restricted 
portion would flood society by a desolating circulation 

The more comprehensive and varied, and more 
generally diffused the demand, the greater relative 
value would it give to the circulation and to produc¬ 
tion, and the greater “ would it strengthen the senti¬ 
ments of natural equity and benevolence among 
mankind.” 

Our true interests gravitate towards a universal 
comprehension, and correspondingly reflect just and 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


97 


protective relations on all, according to their demands. 
The precious metals themselves expressing a relative 
amount of labor, move as the natural representatives 
of all value, hastening, as they are called, to adjust 
and determine, with exact justice, all industries for 
the perfect development of society, and for the 
perfect happiness of man, “ they bring into play and 
competition the general freedom, intelligence, virtue, 
and benevolence, among individuals and societies, for 
the general good,” whereby the selfish and benevolent 
feelings of society are reconciled, and work out a 
general system of mutual coadjutation in the place of 
that of force. 

u All persons and interests are naturally attracted, 
by enlarging correspondences to some central unity of 
society, for perfecting relations at home and abroad.” 
This unity imparts a desire of elevation and refine¬ 
ment that is reflected protectively on the productive 
energies of society, and all are harmonized in a unity 
of universal correspondence. 

The Gobelins were manufacturers, in France, of a 
costly kind of tapestry, and numbered some 800 or 
1,000 families. There ceased to be any demand for 
their tapestries, and they were on the point of star¬ 
vation, and applied to the king for assistance, who 
refused, for want of power thus to apply the means 
raised for a general trust; they then applied to the 
queen, who directed her chamberlain to furnish the 
reception-room of the Palace with the stuffs of the 
Gobelins. This was followed by such a demand for 


98 


liEFLKi ' T1ONS Fit OM 


these tapestries, that the Gobelins were raised, at the 

voice of the queen, from a condition of starvation to that 

of the happiest people in the world. And this central 

unity is, itself, adjusted with those of other nations for 

peaceful and universal correspondence around their 

common center. 

* 

“ The world turns round as its great center draws, 

And princes’ lives bind stronger than their laws.” 


CHAPTER III. 

The governing relations are more protective : 

1st. As they enlarge, and multiply adventitious 
conditions for free and universal correspondence. 

2d. As they are organized to express appetences 
for more enlarged correspondences and for more 
perfect productions. 

3d. As the amount of money is regulated by the 
demand and supplies of universal commerce; and a 
given sum represents a larger amount in consumption 
and a larger amount of stock in production. 

First. A tax or tariff for protection, by the home 
government, would, to the extent of such tariff, prefer 
the home product till the reduction in the value of 
home circulation, from its increase, would raise the 
cost of home production above that of foreign and the 
tariff added; when the importation would commence 
again, and increase, till the reduction of home circula¬ 
tion would reduce home cost to the foreign cost and 



MY NOTE HOOK. 


99 


tariff’added. Upon this basis of exchange, there would 
be no protection to home manufactures, but a tax on 
them and on all home products, when sold in foreign 
markets, equal to that laid on foreign products sold in 
home markets. The tariff would operate as a reduc¬ 
tion, to the same extent, of all fixed compensations and 
obligations to pay money at home. If, for instance, 
the tariff should average twenty per cent, on all of our 
imports, the importations would cease and our exports 
would be exchanged for money, which would continue 
to swell our home circulation till its depreciation would 
reduce the home value of $1.20 to the value of $1.00 
abroad. The price of all commodities, that make up 
the cost of home production, would rise till such cost 
would amount to the cost of the foreign product and 
the tariff’ added, and would continue to advance till 
the foreign product would again become cheaper than 
the home, when the former exchange would be again 
resumed, on the basis, however, of such higher costs, 
amounting to twenty per cent, on all home industries, 
and all means for religious, moral and intellectual 
purposes. Fixed compensations and prices of products 
sold abroad would not rise at all, and they would lose 
by the increase of the cost of production, to the extent 
of the tax or tariff, or twenty per cent. 

This would include our home manufactures, for the 
protection of which the tariff had been levied ; for the 
increased cost of home manufactures, having risen 
twenty per cent., would be equal to the; tariff paid by 
the foreign manufacturer, when there would be no pro- 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


100 

tection to the home manufacturer; but, in the foreign 
markets, the foreign manufacturer would not pay our 
tariff, and our home cost would follow our home manu¬ 
facturer, and would be equal to a tax of twenty per 
cent, on our home manufacturer in favor of foreign, 
in all the markets of the world, besides our own. 

The amount of sales of cotton fabrics in South 
America from the United States has fallen to 
$2,000,000, and that of Great Britain has risen to 
$39,000,000. 

It will be seen from the “American Almanac,” of 
1879, that the cost of producing cotton in 1876 was 
9 r 2 (7 cents per pound, and the price obtained was 9 T %- 
cents per pound; and I suppose the statistics of last 
year would show a more unfavorable comparison 
between the price of cotton and its cost of production. 

Says Ricardo : “ Under a system of perfectly free 
commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital 
and labor to such employments as are most beneficial 
to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is 
admirably connected with the universal good of the 
whole, by stimulating industry, by rewarding inge¬ 
nuity, and by using most efficiently the powers bestowed 
by nature. It distributes labor most effectively and 
most economically ; whilst, by increasing the general 
means of production, it diffuses general benefit, and 
binds together, by one common tie of interest and 
intercourse, the universal society of nations through¬ 
out the civilized world.” 

“Harmony and a liberal intercourse with all 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


101 


nations,” says Washington in his farewell address, 
“ are recommended by policy, humanity and interest; 
even our commercial policy should hold an equal and 
impartial hand, neither seeking nor granting exclu¬ 
sive favors or preferences; consulting the natural 
course of things; diffusing and diversifying, by gentle 
means, the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.” 

Second. From the unity of mankind and its mul¬ 
tiplication from a single individual, there is necessarily 
implied a chief surrounded by the heads of families; 
and, after the enlargement of families, by elders or 
senators of tribes, whose union composed the State. 
“ The chiefs and senators respected the conservatism 
of families” and customs of communities, “inspired 
love of country and paternal regard for mankind,” 
and opened the way for the highest development and 
greatest happiness of all. 

To the abuse of powers by the Roman senators, 
resistance was made by the plebeians, who objected 
that the products of their labor were consumed by the 
idle aristocracy. Harmony was restored by suggest¬ 
ing the similitude of the war between the stomach and 
the laboring members of the body. “ In their mad¬ 
ness, the members had refused to work any longer for 
the stomach, when they began to waste and decline; 
by resuming their labors, in the natural sympathies of 
demand and supply, they were again restored to the 
renewed energies of the whole body.” 

These Roman senators were, at first, the representa¬ 
tives of families. Directed by the center of religious 


102 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


and moral influences, they became patrons of art, 
science and literature, and the distributors of honor 
and respect; and, by their ample means and perma¬ 
nent power, and mainly through hospitality and man¬ 
ners, opened the demands of the social body for the 
development of moral powers that have controlled the 
world. By degrading and enslaving the laboring and 
humble conditions, by destroying all checks for their 
protection, and by conflicts among themselves for 
pre-eminence in the government; and, finally, by 
degrading religion, they became cruel, tyrannical and 
corrupt—their moral powers became perverted, and 
they fled from licentiousness to the feet of a deified 
Emperor. 

The friends of liberty sought safety in the fear of 
God, and were built up, on the rock of unity, in the 
house of God, where all are exercised in relations 
of love and protection, by those wants that “ constrain 
all to conform to what is most agreeable to man’s 
nature, to his constitution, to the good use and perfect 
development of his faculties, to his supreme and ulti¬ 
mate end.” Capital and labor were naturally attracted 
to each other by the wants of the former and the ser¬ 
vices and productions of the latter. As the wants of 
the former became varied, comprehensive and refined, 
the latter responded with corresponding products for 
the development of the general body. 

The night of barbarism came, and all was outer 
darkness, except the hill-tops, where the organized 
communities of the Church, as the virgins’of prophecy, 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


103 


reflected the lights of past civilizations from the lamps 
of the cloister. 

Ihe hospitality of the bishops and clergy, whose 
vows placed them above the domestic obligations of 
barbarian society, and in stronger attachment for these 
in the spiritual government of God, directed by the 
central light of Rome, gradually instilled into the 
minds of barbarian chiefs and their vassals those 
wants that slowly turned barbarian violence into 
Christian customs; from which have grown up, in 
every variety, governments with the liberty and 
refinements of modern civilization. Capital and labor 
were exercised in communities with conventional and 
municipal laws, organized under the instructions and 
protection of the Church, and, out of the just relations 
of demand and supply, moulded the Constitution of 
England, according to the principles of the common 
law, for the growth, protection, and enlarged corres¬ 
pondence of labor with the wants of the world. 

The Senate of the United States is the enlarged rep¬ 
resentative of sovereign States, with their vast systems 
of demand and supply, and should grow out of the 
habits of the*protective relations; and, with the execu¬ 
tive and judiciary, should possess such means and 
permanency, that, being harmonized with a popular 
representation, and with similar State organizations, 
would enable them to reflect natural and moral powers 
on society for enlarging, diversifying, and refining 
demands for development into a free, just, refined and 
enlarged civilization, so that our industries might be 


104 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


economized into a vast system of convolutions to sup¬ 
ply the wants of all with the varieties of the earth, and 
to reflect on each the moral and religious powers of all 
for perfect social development. 

By subjecting the senate, executive, and, in the 
instances of the States, the judiciary, to the constant 
control of the elective majority, our constitutions have 
not only checked, but degraded the natural forces of 
society and have left government a prey to selfishness, 
corruption and fraud. All the means for elevating 
virtue, wisdom, honor and labor, through the de¬ 
mands of government, are perverted to degrade them. 

But our constitutions retained the common law, that 
has reflected, on all, its free conditions between capital 
and labor, and traditional habits, thoughts, and feel¬ 
ings, that have educated a popular judgment, that, in 
the name of the “people,” has exercised the only 
conservative principles of liberty in our country. 

Man’s social nature began in the relation of hus¬ 
band and wife. His governing and her subject affec¬ 
tions were transmitted to their descendants, for 
development in every variety of social assistance. Her 
subject condition was relieved by that of lier children, 
who, as servants, were discriminated by apt or pre¬ 
pared qualifications for serving the varied wants of 
the family. By succession, the sons, having absolute 
control, “ grouped their separate families into a kind 
of aristocracy around some directing power;” and 
servants, multiplied with the wants and conveniences 
of a more enlarged and comprehensive society, formed 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


105 


a distinct relation in the family, and relieved both 
wives and children and each other in the family 
economy. This society, by enlargement, became diver¬ 
sified by natural and local varieties of production and 
of climate, etc.; and different customs modified such 
diversities into separate and distinct communities and 
nations. 

In their conflicts with each other, the persons of the 
conquered were at the absolute disposal of their con¬ 
querors, who subjected them by regulations corres¬ 
ponding to the condition of a conquered and distinct 
people, when they were distributed, by sale, among 
individuals and families, and became slaves. 

The master regards his slave as his chattel, especially 
when the distinction between them is general and well 
defined, and not as property diffused through the just 
relations of society, and having a self-directing respon¬ 
sibility. 

The social wants and qualifications of the slave 
make a very limited demand, and give a very limited 
value to the circulation. Mr. Say says: “ The 

utility of money is intense, in the compound ratio of 
the division of labor and the variety of individual 
consumption. On plantations, the slaves have very 
little variety of production or consumption ; they are 
fed, clothed, etc., in the wholesale, and in the plainest 
and most uniform maimer.” Say’s P. E.,note to page 
184. 

The manual dexterity of the slave is arbitrarily 
trained and directed to accumulate for the benefit of 


106 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


the master, who provides for his labor the richest soils, 
and who prefers him in all simple mechanical employ¬ 
ments. 

Mainly by his labor, the production of the Southern 
States, in cotton alone, amounted annually to about 
$200,000,000, which was more than the products of 
all the mines. This vast amount was realized mostly 
in foreign markets, and, besides the depression of 
price by the quantity produced, when it is remem¬ 
bered what proportion money has to property, it may 
be conceived how this single production inflated the 
cost of production at home. This inflation corres¬ 
pondingly depreciated the value of money, as there 
was but a limited demand by the slaves; and, in the 
same degree, lessened its capacity for commercial and 
manufacturing development, and for social, moral, 
intellectual and religious advancement. It required 
more than all the wants of society to offset this single 
production of the slave, and, of course, it was impos¬ 
sible for any other home industry to flourish. Bv 
combining with the capital of the master, the slave 
drove the free laborer from his protecting and refin¬ 
ing associations, from the richer soils, from profitable 
employments in the mechanic arts. And what value 
did our millions of slaves give to the production of 
art or science? What to manufacturers, to com¬ 
merce, and to the professions? What to colleges and 
schools and academies? Or, how did they, in any 
way, contribute to the development of societv in 
peace; or to its defence in time of disturbance? By 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


107 


substitution, they consumed all the means of free 
labor for development, and enormously increased the 
circulation, depressed its value, and proportionally 
raised the cost of production, and overwhelmed the 
wasted means for moral, social and intellectual 
improvement. 

In order to diminish such increase of costs, all the 
ameliorating circumstances of home, all its pleasing 
indulgences, all moral, religious and intellectual cul¬ 
tivation, closed to the conditions of free labor, and 
the slave, even, was driven hungry, naked and 
cheerless to unremitting toil. 

Had those in the condition of slaves been of the 
same general distinction as the free, and the sums they 
produced applied liberally to all means of bettering 
their condition, and opening to them liberal corres¬ 
pondence with the world, the value of the circulation, 
and, of course, of the labor of all, would have been 
intensified, working out and refining slavery into a 
system of mutual coadjutation as under the direction 
of Christianity in the Middle Ages. 

I think it is Bracton who remarks, that, “ whosoever 
has a companion is a slave,” which refers to the sub¬ 
jecting nature of all relations of society; and which 
expresses just conditions for universal coadjutation by 
all, for the social perfection of each and all, according 
to their wants, when each becomes a master of all. 

The desire of nature is to harmonize general varie¬ 
ties in separate communities of homogeneous people, 
modified, according to the positive laws of God, for 


108 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


peaceful correspondence with all nations, in the unity 
of His Church, “ where families and societies grow out 
in harmony with the wants of all conditions, fostering 
habits and affections essential to the good of each other 
and of mankind where individuals, families, socie¬ 
ties and relations become the property of eacli and all ; 
and the improvement of either contemplates that of 
the others. 

The family of the younger Pliny was regulated by 
a benevolent regard for the happiness of his slaves, 
and they had many of the privileges of citizens, yet 
they were necessarily deprived of the elevating cor¬ 
respondence of society. 

It behooves the State to provide what it deems 
suitable means for the development of those who, in 
the natural order of things and in the Providence of 
God, are entrusted to its care. These powers connect 
individuals with universal relations by the exercise of 
means that a universal government may suggest, but 
cannot provide; for the relations of families, societies 
and nations arc necessities of its organization. If, 
from some national or well-defined general distinc¬ 
tions, or other cause, the proper means are impossible, 
such distinct people should separate, or the State must 
continually suffer a corresponding loss until the 
inferior is wasted. 

It is the nature of the means applied to aptitudes, 
and not their name, that subjects all conditions into 
social correspondences for their greatest happiness, and 
when these means conform to the laws of God and the 


MY NOTE HOOK. 


109 


truth taught by His Church, whereby the free will of 
man is perfected in universal correspondence, then 
slaves are freemen in His eternal justice, which com¬ 
mands servants to obey their masters: “Veritas 
liberabit vos.” 

In the Southern States, the slaves were distinguished 
from the free and governing population by their black 
color. This distinction will ever prevent them, 
however changed may be their condition, from rising 
up into equal correspondences in the same society with 
the whites. 

Climate or local circumstances may have given 
them a black skin, and long ages of depressing circum¬ 
stances may have modified inferior differences, yet 
these distinctions have all marked them for distinct 
nationalities to themselves, where they might be 
stimulated by the motives of development through the 
correspondences of their peculiar organisms. And 
this natural inclination is inviting and pushing the 
negro into distinct organizations for religious, educa¬ 
tional and social purposes. 

At the beginning of this century, the proportion of 
negro slaves in Tennessee to the whites was about one 
to thirteen ; and, at the commencement of the war, one 
to four. Throughout the South, negro slavery was 
spreading like dark and wasteful waters. Not another 
century could have elapsed without the utter desolation 
and barbarism of the South. With her infinite 
advantages of soil, climate and seasons, by which she 
would bloom, at once, under the labor and energies of 


110 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


a homogeneous free people, the South still clings to 
the negro race, and strives now, while it is wasting 
under depressing circumstances, to retain it in her 
midst, though she is threatened with the plagues that 
Providence permits to nations that violate His laws. 
Her laboring classes must not only occupy situations 
favorable for the supply of physical wants, but they 
must enter into all the sympathies of society, and 
expand under them, with enlarged and varied de¬ 
mands into a comprehensive social unity. The circu¬ 
lation from her large export production is consuming, 
unless its value be intensified by the general demand 
of a free, religious, moral and intellectual intercourse 
at home and with the world. 

The selfishness of individuals and societies prefers 
all means to acquire large productions to themselves, 
whilst the spirit of Catholicity prefers the means of 
value, and contemplates the religious, moral, intellec¬ 
tual and social development of all as the property of 
each. 

The social laws of God are applied by the adventi¬ 
tious laws of man; and the love of God is manifest 
in that of our neighbor. 

As means to improve the laboring class, especially 
agriculturists, supposing them to be of the same gene¬ 
ral distinction as the class who own the capital of the 
country, long leases suggest the greatest efficiency. 
They afford the means of independence and of religious, 
moral and intellectual development to the renter. A. 
lease of five hundred years, with a yearly rental corres- 


MY MOTE BOOK. 


Ill 


ponding to the profits of the most valuable invest¬ 
ment, at the time the lease was made, and secured by 
conditions of lien, forfeiture, etc., would afford a higher 
and better secured investment than any other to the 
landlord, and, at the same time, elevate the renter into 
a more respectable connection with property and value. 
All ameliorations would be cumulative assurances of 
prompt pay to the landlord. The long term would 
give a dignity to the lessee, and a permanent home, 
secured from the tyranny of the landlord. He would 
have inducements to erect buildings and permanent 
improvements, and to fertilize the land so as to make 
their productions greater, and to surround his home 
with economical supplies that grow up with long leases. 
To double the production would proportionally reduce 
the rents, when the landlord would be prevented from 
stepping in and appropriating the lessee’s improve¬ 
ments, or to make them a pretense of value to increase 
his rents. The longer lease would enlarge the lessee’s 
interest and sympathies with the freedom and general 
prosperity of the country. The relation of land¬ 
lord and tenant would be raised into one of mutual 
respect and interest; combinations would be formed 
for religious, moral and educational purposes, whereby 
a broader social value would be given to money, for 
the general improvement. 

A short lease, or yearly rent, under the constant 
direction and control of the landlord, as in slavery, 
which it resembles, might afford one production in 
larger amounts, which would be estimated mostly for 


112 


llEFLEVTlON8 FR OM 


the landlord; whereas, in a long lease there would 
grow up an infinite variety of economical conveniences, 
each contributing something to the support, to the 
liberty, independence, and, by associations with a per¬ 
manent home, to the social and intellectual improve¬ 
ment of the tenant and his family. Whilst the first 
might afford more quantity of a specific production for 
the landlord, the latter would certainly afford more 
value to products, by variety, and to society, by the 
social cultivation of the tenant and his family. 

The ancient church leases in England were liberal 
and for long terms, till they were cut down to short 
periods by Queen Elizabeth, who degraded the ten¬ 
antry under pretence of preventing the impoverish¬ 
ment of churchmen, whose benefices she plundered on 
all hands. 

Laws regulating interest at low rates, and enforced 
by stringent regulations, are efficient means for the 
improvement of the laboring classes. Interest is the 
price paid by them to the class who own capital, for 
the use of money; and it is a kind of tax paid by the 
laboring class to that which owns capital for its use. 
The rate has always been tlm subject of governmental 
regulation; and, beyond all question, such belongs to 
the adventitious state, for, without its aid, nothing 
could be realized. High rates increase the profits, 
and, of course, enlarge the class of those who do not 
labor at the expense of those who labor. Low rates 
invite the union of capital and labor, and estab¬ 
lish a community of interest and a sympathy between 
them. 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


113 


Low rates sustain home interests against foreign. 
A home manufacturing establishment paying 10 per 
cent, would not be able to sustain a competition with 
those abroad paying 3. Seven per cent, would express 
the burden or tax on our labor in favor of foreign 
labor. At 3 per cent, the capitalist might prefer in¬ 
vestment in union with labor for greater profit, when, 
besides such profit, such union would elevate labor 
and sustain it in competition. 

Interest is diffused through business relations, and, 
when it is high, it becomes oppressive, through pre¬ 
ferred channels of middlemen, as merchants, etc., who 
transfer their burdens on others. The profits of labor 
do not amount generally to more than 3 per cent., 
and the 10 per cent, paid by these middlemen must 
be added to the price of their goods, when the laborers 
who are consumers, become, involuntarily, borrowers 
at 10 per cent., while they make but 3. 

As the high rates enlarge the means of the class 
that do not labor, so do low rates enlarge the means 
of the class who labor. High rates divert money 
from production and dissolve the protective relations 
between capital and labor, and divert them into 
channels of oppression. 

Labor is employed to construct when such is more 
valuable than the interest on money; but when the 
rate of interest is higher than the profits on produc¬ 
tion, the laborer is unemployed ; the depreciation of 
property follows, with general distress and suffering. 

A farm realizing $1,000 per annum, would be equal 
to $33,333J at 3 per cent., $1G,GGG J at G per cent., and 


10 


114 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


only $10,000 at 10 per cent. High rates of interest seek 
large amounts, by degrading property and labor ; low 
rates seek large values, by elevating property and labor. 

National justice is absolutely indispensable for the 
protection and development of labor. Society should 
express just social conditions for the exercise of labor, 
in all varieties of production, and for the distribution 
of its products throughout the world. Government is 
the civil power of society, and declares and enforces 
these conditions, and subjects all wills for perfecting 
and distributing the proceeds of labor in response to 
the demands of the world. When these conditions 
are in harmony with the just demands of all, and 
with the laws of God, government is expressed in 
their essential force, and labor expresses just and 
pleasurable conditions, in all, for the liberty and hap¬ 
piness of all. The sovereign becomes the fountain of 
honor, to whom persons and things are attracted for 
more elevated positions, or more enlarged relations ; 
but when government reflects fraud and injustice, and 
refuses to fulfill its engagements, it degrades the influ¬ 
ence of natural relations, dissolves all obligations 
of conventional consent, upon which free governments 
are founded. It unnaturally binds the will to general 
perversion, and justifies resistance. Fraud in the 
government destroys self-respect, love of country and 
general confidence, and depresses labor in all relations 
of trust and credit. 

“ Quid leges sine moribus 
Vance proficiunt 

Promptness gives value to money, and benefits 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


115 


labor ; for, by repetition of payment, a proportionally 
larger representative value is given to money. 
Those economical means of payment by money of 
account, as checks, drafts, bills, set-offs at clearance- 
houses, are wonderful aids in adjusting payment by 
the use of small amounts of money. The amounts of 
transactions in London, in a few weeks, exceed prob¬ 
ably the circulation of Great Britain. 

Stay and redemption laws operate, inversely, to 
depress the value of money, discourage investments, 
and oppress labor. 

Taxes should not be 'levied on the necessary and 
convenient provision of households, nor on such as the 
laws exempt from the debts of the creditor (for we 
cannot conceive why the debt of the State should be 
preferred to that of a single individual), but should 
be laid with greater proportion on wealth, as it 
increases beyond such exemption and the comfortable 
provision of the homestead. The public faith and 
honor is more secure when the public debt reposes 
only on wealth, and not, in any degree, upon the 
necessities of the poor ; when the franchise of the 
latter would always sustain the public honor, which 
franchise itself should be restrained by an independent 
senate, in its power to create public loans. 

As the wealth of an individual becomes larger, it par¬ 
takes more of the nature of the trust of a stewardship for 
the benefit of society, and should impart a value to prop¬ 
erty for the benefit of all. As there must be poor in 
every society, all relations should be modified and 


116 


JiEFLECTlONS FitOM 


adjusted for their highest skill, intelligence, mor¬ 
ality and happiness, and the wealthy cease to be rich 
in an exclusive or selfish sense; but become stewards 
in a general system of coadjutation, and, by econom¬ 
ical selections in employments, restrain and adjust 
population within the circumstances of comfort and 
happiness. Money, then, becomes infinitely more 
valuable and constructive, and builds everlasting 
habitations for security in seasons of distress. 

Pan was represented as having the head of a god 
and the nether parts of a goat; Apollo, with all his 
members in the symmetry of a perfect man. In a 
dispute between them, as to their relative merits, it 
was agreed to leave it to the judgment of Midas; and 
they appeared before him. At the sound of Apollo’s 
harp, nature displayed her infinite varieties, in per¬ 
fection, and in harmonious correspondence with the 
perfect development of man. Pan then tuned his soft 
Arcadian pipes, when nature displayed her utmost 
refinements contrasted with degraded forms ; liberty 
with slavery, wealth with poverty, and enchanting 
pleasures with wasting sorrows. Midas was sordid 
and once had wished that all he touched might turn 
to gold, when his cherished daughter yellowed and 
hardened in his embrace. Yet Midas decided for 
Pan. Apollo, turning, left his curse, and Midas’ 
ears, indignant, swelled and hairy grew just like an 
ass’s. For concealment, he wrapped them round with 
disguises of pleasing convolutions; but the Fates had 
sworn by Stygian oath that the secret should be told; 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


117 


so to the fields he went and dug a hole and whispered 
there that Midas had the ears of an ass, then covered 
it up as before; then on the fields the wild reeds grew, 
which, shaken by the winds did say, that the judge 
had the ears of an ass. 

There is philosophy and wisdom in the general 
harmony and coadjutation of humanity that resolve 
nature into ever growing and ever renewing forms of 
strength and beauty. 


“ This is the charm by sages often told, 

Converting all it touches into gold.” 

Yet there is, seemingly, a preferred charm that 
belongs to money in bags, in heaps, or stores, or, dis¬ 
played in the self indulgence of the rich, contrasted 
with the degraded conditions of toil ; and from the 
vale the stricken cords respond : 

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 

Where money multiplies, and men decay.” 

GoLDSMixn’s “Deserted Village.” 

Says Pope: 

“Wealth in the gross, is death, but life, diffused; 

As poison heals, in just proportion used: 

In heaps, like ambergris, a stink it lies, 

But well diffused, is incense to the skies.” 

When gold was first discovered in California, it be¬ 
came so plentiful that it required eight dollars a day to 
support life with ordinary comfort. All manufactured 
articles and the products of the fields, orchards, and 

1C* 


118 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


pastures, etc., were imported, because the cost of their 
production was too high, and it was cheaper to import 
them than to raise them ; and society could not 
sustain their producers. Nor was the circulation 
sufficiently lessened, by such importations, to restore 
an equilibrium that should preserve and protect these 
or any other products besides those of the mines. 
But fortunes having been acquired and a taste for 
refinements being extensively diffused, not only such, 
but tropical products, and silks, wines, and luxuries, 
etc., were imported, when the circulation became 
reduced, and it cost only $1.50 per day to live, as 
formerly at $8.00. 

All circumstances of cost were so reduced that it 
became profitable for California to convert a vast 
proportion of coin into improvements, to construct 
manufactories, to build cities, plant orchards, raise 
flocks in pastures and on the mountains. The fields 
were soon yellow with harvests, and the whole face of 
nature teemed with variety and plenty, and clusters 
of growing societies, which, of course, gave a greater 
representative value to money. In the first place, 
there was a conflict between the labor of the mines 
and that of the fields and factories, and, in the latter, 
these interests assisted each other. 

Had the labor of California been degraded, or, 
slave labor, the products of the mines would have 
been greater to the master but would have flooded 
and wasted all enterprises instead of being consumed 
by the varied and diffused wants other free and growing 
industries. 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


119 


Spain imported gold and silver in vast quantities 
from America. As her circulation thus increased, the 
cost of her production at home was proportionately 
greater than in the rest of Europe. England, under 
the first Mary, then under the Stewarts, sought the 
Spanish trade; and under James II, conducted almost 
the entire Spanish trade with Europe. The conse¬ 
quence was that the material wealth of England 
increased more rapidly, during the latter reign, than 
at any other period of the British Empire. 

The fleet under James II amounted to 173 vessels, 
requiring 42,000 seamen. Sir Joshua Childs says, 
that, “in 1688, there were on the Change more men 
worth £10,000 than there were in 1650, worth 
£1,000; that besides the great increase of rich clothes, 
plate, goods, and household furniture, coaches were, 
in that time, augmented a hundred-foldA To prevent 
the exportation of her gold and silver Spain enacted 
laws of the severest penalties. The effect was to 
increase and continue the high cost of home produc¬ 
tion. Contrabandists and smugglers plied their trade; 
and robbers and buccaneers preyed upon her commerce. 
The relations between Spain and her colonists became 
conflicting and more oppressive to the colonies than 
independent relations with other countries; and the 
former were dissolved at the first opportunity. 

England converted the coin she received from Spain 
into means, as we have seen, of general development 
into a more enlarged and refined social life, and into 
enterprises that opened to her correspondences with 


120 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


all the world. The leases in England that were of 
long terms did not experience a corresponding rise, 
and the tenants received proportionally of the 
general prosperity. 

The throne is the national center “ that imparts a 
desire of elevation and refinement through all the 
gradations of society,” and opens the pockets of the 
aristocracy, to whom the laws of primogeniture 
generally furnish permanent incomes, and who direct 
the tastes and demands, in subordinate spheres for 
correspondence with the world, that intensify home 
values and stimulate home production. The necessity 
of this uniform influence of the crown was manifested, 
by expressions of disrespect, from shop-keepers and 
laborers, when it was interrupted or withdrawn too 
long. u The splendor, rights, and power of the crown 
were attached to it for the benefit of the people, and not 
for the private gratification of the sovereign, they are, 
therefore, to be guarded on account of the public.” 
See opinion of Lord Kenyon in the case of Kooke vs. 
Day self, 4 Term, R. 410, 3d Atk. 171. 

Third. “ During the middle ages, when civilization 
began to make its conveniences known, money, the means 
of obtaining them, circulated by toll, or weight.” It 
was afterward stamped or coined by the lords, or 
chiefs of small districts, as well as by kings and passed 
by denominations: it soon became adulterated to such 
an extent that little entered but copper, when it was 
called black money (“ monetci nigra”) 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


121 


At the great fair at Troyes, where all Western 
Europe went to buy commodities, its standard of 
weight and value was determined, which, from the 
name of the merchants, was called Eastern, Esterling, 
or Sterling money. The penny was the 240th part, 
in weight and value , of the pound: or, a pound of 
silver was divided into twelve parts, each of which 
was subdivided into twenty parts, or penny weights. 
The proportion of gold to copper or other base metal, 
w^as 22 of the former to 2 of the latter in a given 
quantity of 24; or, as it was called, 22 carats fine. 

The power to coin money afterward became one of 
the sovereign powers, and exercised by the kings 
only ; and every other coinage was prohibited. In 
England, the tenants, in order to preserve the purity 
of their coin, paid a rent or tax to the king called 
Monetagium, or moneyage. It was a shilling paid 
every third year by each hearth, to induce the king 
not to use his prerogative in debasing the coin. 

Henry II repaired the coin, which had been 
exceedingly debased by his predecessors. “ Robbery, 
arson, murder and false coining were put in the cate¬ 
gory of crimes of equal magnitude, and all punished 
by the loss of the right hand and right foot; and 
moneyage was abolished.” 

Under the plea of state necessity, to carry on their 
wars, all the preparations for which were furnished by 
them, the kings continued to debase the coin, and the 
struggle for good money was pre-eminent in that for 
liberty. At the trial and execution of Somerset, one 


122 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


of the charges against him was that he adulterated the 
coin. 

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 774 pence, instead 
of 240, came to be coined out of a pound of silver; 
debts by the government were then paid off by less 
than one-third of the weight of the precious metals, 
and also of the value which had been contracted to be 
paid. Queen Elizabeth paid off her troops in Ireland 
with base coin. In a case before Sir Mathew Hale, 
on a bill payable in Ireland, and payment tendered in 
this base metal, Sir Mathew decided that the payment 
might be made in such coin. This, in the early ages, 
would have been called an abuse of prerogative, to 
prevent which moneyage was paid by the tenants. 
“It may have been law/’ justly remarks the editor of 
Christian’s Blackstone, “ but it was not natural 
equity.” 

Queen Anne authorized one Wood, a manufacturer 
of Wolverhampton, to issue, to a small extent, base 
coin in Ireland, that had not long before been pros¬ 
trate at the Boyne; but, at the call of Dean Swift in 
his Drapier letters, she rose, as one man, to resist the 
fraud that was contemplated on her industries. 

Philip the Fair of France claimed the right of 
debasing the coin as one of the brightest jewels of his 
crown. He was called the “Base Coiner” by the 
people, who demanded that the coinage of St. Louis 
should be restored. 

To protect itself against the adulterated coin flowing 
in from France and the neighboring States, the free 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


123 


city of Amsterdam, in 1609, incorporated its celebrated 
bank of deposit. “ This bank received the worn and 
dipt coin, and gave credit in the bank books which 
represented, guilder for guilder, money actually on 
deposit , and money, too, exactly according to the 
standard of the mint. All bills drawn on Amsterdam, 
of more than 600 guilders value, should be paid in 
bank money. These bills went up to par in every 
market in Europe.” 

u The bank of England was incorporated in 1694 
to supply money for the exigencies of the revolution.” 
It was incorporated for loans to the government, then 
pushed for funds. The certificates of deposit in the 
bank of Amsterdam represented guilder for guilder, 
but the bank of England issued such evidences largely 
in excess of the amount of coin reserved, and without 
assignment, circulated them as money. “A run was 
made on the bank, and it suspended in February 
1697, its notes being 24 per cent, below par. It 
suspended again in 1797, and did not resume till 
1821. In 1813 its notes were at thirty per cent, 
discount in gold. In 1829 notes for less than £5 
were forbidden to be circulated, and the charter was 
renewed for the ninth time. In 1844, Sir Robert 
Peel gave the bank a new charter which restricted the 
issue, by its issue department, to £15,000,000, based 
on a government debt amounting to £11,000,000; 
beyond this the bank must have pound for pound of 
gold and silver in its coffers.” 


124 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


“ Since 1844 the government has thrice authorized 
the bank to violate this charter, and to issue more 
notes; in 1847, 1857 and in 1866.” 

“In its banking department the bank of England 
differs from other banks in having the management of 
the public debt, and paying the dividends on it; in 
holding the deposits belonging to government, and 
making advances to it when necessary; in aiding in 
the collection of the public money, and in being the 
bank of other banks through clearance houses.” 
Perry’s P. E. 

The convention, that formed the Constitution of 
the United States, had seen that the adulteration of 
the coin, by barons, and then by kings, had shown 
them unsafe regulators of its standard; that the com¬ 
munities—the centers of capital and industry—had 
always shown a sensitive watchfulness over its purity; 
that, being called upon by the King to provide ways 
and means to meet the exigencies of his government, 
the practice in England, of discussing the amount to be 
raised, especially with weak princes, gradually incor¬ 
porated their representatives into Parliament, with the 
provision that all money bills should originate with 
the representatives of these communities who composed 
the House of Commons; that Parliament, having seen 
the efficiency of the Bank of Amsterdam,—itself a 
corporate community—incorporated the banking 
scheme of Charles Montague, Marquis of Halifax, 
who was called the ablest financier, but the meanest 
man in England, which should multiply and loan to 
government its notes to carry on the revolution, with- 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


125 


out any regard to the amount of coin ; they saw that, 
in the former instance, the amount of money had been 
fraudulently increased by the adulteration of the coin, 
and, in the latter instance by fraudulently multiply¬ 
ing the evidences of money in bank, and, without 
assignment, circulating these false evidences as money, 
which was the same as if the Bank of Amsterdam had 
issued false certificates of deposit and circulated them 
as money. They reasoned that the coin was the just, 
natural and reasonable medium for the exchange of 
products, as it expressed the just relation of the labor 
in its production with that of other products; or that 
the labor necessary to produce a gold or silver dollar 
from the mines, was equal to that necessary to pro¬ 
duce a bushel of wheat or other product worth a 
dollar, and that like every other commodity, its value 
was regulated by supply and demand. They also 
saw, that after the establishment of the Bank of 
England, the fluctuation of the currency, and of all 
values, by her notes, was greater than it had ever 
been by the adulteration of the coin. They also 
observed around them the mischievous effects upon 
the industries of the country, of the large amounts of 
paper currency that had been issued by the Colonies 
and Congress to supply the exigencies of the Revo¬ 
lution. Then having in view these abuses, and 
contemplating proper remedies and safeguards, they 
conferred the power on Congress to coin money and 
regulate the value of foreign coin ; to punish counter¬ 
feiting; to fix the standard of weights and measures; 

11 


126 


REELECT1ONS Fit 031 


and prohibited the States from making anything a 
legal tender besides gold and silver; and from passing 
any law impairing the obligation of contracts. 

A proposition was made in the Convention to 
incorporate the power to make a bank, in the Consti¬ 
tution, and was rejected. It was not necessary to 
expressly provide against the exercise of such power, 
because a bank might be chartered, like that of 
Amsterdam, and be limited to the financial operations 
of the country without adding a dollar to the circula¬ 
tion, and without any power to disturb its uniformity, 
and because the Constitution was a charter of granted 
powers, and none others could be exercised except 
such as were necessarily implied. 

It may be admitted that Congress has the power to 
create a financial agent with corporate powers, and 
that such corporation may operate with the usual 
evidences of money; but the right to falsify these 
evidences and to substitute them for the circulating 
standard of values, assumes the right to legalize fraud 
and crime, and to impair every contract, and to dis¬ 
turb all just relations among men ; which will ever be 
denied to Congress, or anybody else, while virtue, 
truth and justice exist. 

The power given was simply to determine the 
weight and purity of the coin to be distributed as a 
uniform medium of exchange, so that the people 
might have the guaranty of the government of the 
certain amount of gold and silver they were using in 
transactions of exchange. It was not given to make 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


127 


money; but to preserve its greatest exchangeable 
value from depreciation by the fraud of governing 
powers or individuals. 

A bank had been created in England to supply her 
exigencies in war, by fraudulently multiplying the 
evidences of coin. Shortly after the government of 
the United States had gone into operation, it was pro¬ 
posed to create a bank to relieve the treasury from the 
embarassments caused by the paper credits issued 
during the war. This was opposed by the States’- 
Rights party, who objected the want of constitutional 
power, and the unavoidable interference by the bank 
with the industries and powers of the States. A 
bank, however, was incorporated by Congress, and 
power given it to issue its notes without having an 
equal reserve in coin. 

Mr. Webster has said of Mr. Hamilton : “ He 

touched the rock of public credit, and plenteous 
streams gushed forth/’ He might have said the same 
thing of the “ Base Coiner ” or of a gang of counter¬ 
feiters ; the principle is the same, so far as the conduct 
of each affected values by misrepresenting quantities. 

What is the difference between the adulteration of 
the coin by Philip-le-Bel, and the issue of treasury 
notes by our government, or between the adulteration 
by nobles, or by counterfeiters, if you please, and the 
over-issue made by our banks all over the country ? 
Those who adulterated the coin, made many dollars 
out of one, and those who issued and circulated false 
evidences of the amount, did the same thing; and all 


128 


11EFLEV TJ OFS Fll OM 


equally committed fraud and robbery by depreciating 
values. Mr. Blackstone says : “ The increase of the 

circulation depreciates values;” and, of course, all 
fixed compensations; as contracts, judgments and 
decrees of court, salaries and wages, etc. 

Mr. Say says: “The increased quantity reduces 
the value of every part.” He further says that “fluc¬ 
tuations are calamitous. The producer calculates 
upon the probable value of his product, and nothing 
depresses him so much as a fluctuation that defies all 
calculation; his losses and his gains are equally 
unmerited.” Say’s P. E., 145. 

Chancellor Kent seems to deplore the effects of 
these fluctuations, and recommends the substitution, 
in instances, of a useful product to preserve uniformity 
in values. “New York,” says Chancellor Kent, “in 
the act instituting the university, made provision, by 
an annual gift of 40,000 bushels of wheat. This 
arrangement,” says he, “saves the interests of the 
persons in whose favor rent is reserved, from sinking 
by the depreciation of the money, owing to the accu¬ 
mulation of coin and paper,” etc. 

At the time of the charter of the second bank of the 
United States, the manufacturing interest of the 
country, was in its infancy, whilst the agricultural 
products, especially of the South, had begun to 
increase very rapidly, and were exchanged mainly for 
foreign goods. The bank soon became embarassed 
when Mr. Checves was elected its president. He con¬ 
tracted the circulation in the west, and ostensibly to 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


129 


* 


assist commerce and manufactures, expanded it in the 
east where a corresponding rise in the price of commo¬ 
dities and in the cost of production followed. The 
higher cost of home production enabled the foreign to 
sell cheaper than the home manufacturer, and a 
depressing competition set in against the latter, for 
whose relief the banks increased their loans, by 
issuing more currency, which raised still higher the 
price of commodities, and, to the same extent, the cost 
of home production. 

The demand for the cheaper goods abroad caused 
the export of the precious metals to purchase them, 
which, by reducing the circulation, would soon have 
restored a just basis of competition; but the banks 
supplied the amount removed, when the relation of a 
cheaper production abroad, and a higher production at 
home, was kept up by continual supplies of bank 
paper to the home currency; and the proportion of 
coin continually decreased, whilst that of paper 
increased, till the redemption of the latter became 
impossible. 

The banking and manufacturing interests combined 
and asked for increased taxes on imported goods; and 
a tariff of protection was passed by Congress. The 
Southern agricultural products were then sold abroad, 
in part, for money, which was brought home to buy 
home manufactures that paid no tariff. The great 
increase of such products sent abroad, especially of 
cotton, combined with the simple and comparatively 
small consumption by the slave population, had the 


120 


REFLEC TJ OJVS Eli OM 


effect to increase the circulation and the cost of 
production at the South, when its commerce and man¬ 
ufactures were transferred, for cheaper production, to 
the North, to which the circulation from Southern 
products sold abroad commenced to flow, and con¬ 
tinued to swell, till the home cost of production 
equalled the foreign cost, and the tariff added. 

The banks, being relieved by the tax on imported 
goods and the inflowing specie, renewed their issue of 
paper, and assisted to raise the cost of production, 
which quickly advanced so high that the foreign man¬ 
ufacturers paid the tariff, and sold their goods to us 
cheaper than we could afford to make them. A 
saving was exercised at home by stinting and pushing 
the more dependent conditions of labor, and by infe¬ 
rior imitations of foreign manufactures; but every 
saving by oppression and fraud was appropriated by 
the increased circulation of the banks; and every 
intensity given to money by demands for more gen¬ 
eral and comprehensive improvement—religious, moral 
or intellectual—was immediately depreciated by the 
increase of their paper. 

The competition, then, between home and foreign 
manufactures recommenced in our markets upon the 
basis of a tariff paid by the foreign manufacturer, and 
the higher cost paid by the home manufacturer. The 
home cost, paid by the latter, exceeded the foreign 
cost and the tariff paid by the former to the farther 
extent of the depreciation of the home currency by the 
excess of paper; but, in their competition in the 


MY NOTH BOOK. 


131 


foreign markets, the foreign manufacturer paid no 
tariff, and the home manufacturer was not relieved 
from the high cost of his home production, which 
operated as a tax on home production in favor of 
foreign, equal to the tariff laid at home on foreign 
products, and the depreciation, at home, of the cur¬ 
rency by paper. If, for instance, the circulation had 
been increased 20 per cent, by the tariff, and 10 per 
cent, by the banks, the increased cost of production 
would have operated as a tax of 30 per cent, on all of 
our products then sold abroad. 

In the home competition between the home and 
foreign manufacturers, on the basis of the higher cost 
paid by the former, and the tariff paid by the latter, 
the balance being in favor of the foreign to the extent of 
the depreciation of home circulation by bank paper, 
the foreign manufacturer demanded the precious metals, 
leaving their place to be supplied by the bank paper, 
when the same operation of exhausting the country of 
the coin was repeated. Thus the home cost continued 
to advance in the compound ratio of the increase of the 
tariff, and of the excess of paper circulation, till the 
enormity of the burdens on all products sold abroad 
threatened to destroy all commerce and foreign trade, 
and to cut off all means of civilization from abroad, 
and, to interrupt the harmony of relations and inter¬ 
ests at home. 

In ages of barbarism when the cruelty of the con¬ 
queror was restrained by nu law, human or divine, 
society permitted the adulteration of the coin, as it 
did forced loans and other violent means, for its 


132 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


defense. The creation of communities, with municipal 
powers and immunities, introduced regular govern¬ 
ment, diffused humane sentiments and just principles, 
provided against abuse and violence and furnished 
proper means for protection and defense. Banking 
corporations were instituted to preserve the purity of 
the coin; to afford, by the aggregation of capital, 
means for the protection of society; and to assist 
commerce and its other interests. Their exact repre¬ 
sentatives of the standard money in bank became 
more valuable than the worn and adulterated coin in 
circulation, and gave intensity to values, and preserved 
justice in the relations of things. They were after¬ 
wards incorporated with the power to make and loan 
money, when they exercised, in an aggravated form, 
those very abuses they were at first instituted to 
prevent; and instead of adulterating the coin, they 
made and circulated false substitues, and, by multi¬ 
plying their quantity, depressed values, impaired 
contracts, and imposed burdens on production, for 
foreign markets, equal to the most oppessive taxation. 

To further prevent abuses, our State Constitution 
prohibited the grant of powers by the Legislature, 
“ inconsistent with the general law of the land,” and 
prohibited also the grant of powers, exemptions, and 
immunities other than, by the law, may be extended 
to any member of the community; and the States 
were expressly prohibited by the Constitution of the 
United States from issuing bills of credit; and from 
making anything besides gold and silver a legal 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


133 


tender. But the States, bv their legislatures, created 
numerous institutions, with power to issue bills of 
credit; some exclusively for private interests, with the 
powers, privileges, and immunities, bestowed on cor¬ 
porations for the general good; whose circulation 
mingling with that of the United States, fluctuated 
the interests and feelings of society, ebbing and flow¬ 
ing as inconstant and as wasteful as the sea. 

During these fluctuations, the legal measure of 
value diminished as its paper representative increased, 
and the convertible value of the latter diminished in 
the compound ratio of its increase, and the decrease of 
the coin, till the latter was exhausted, and the paper, 
which had professed to represent it, became utterly 
worthless ; and the intensitv of existing debts had 
been increasing in the inverse ratio of the decrease of 
the coin. 

The Charter of the United States Bank expired in 
1836. In the struggle for its renewal, the bank 
inflated and then contracted its circulation enor¬ 
mously; this was followed by boundless expansion by 
the banks of the States, which raised the cost of pro¬ 
duction and invited foreign products to such an 
extent, that, in a short time, the demand for specie 
drained the circulation and exhausted the banks; 
when they suspended, and precipitated the country in 
bankruptcy. 

The expansion had depressed all salaries, and 
wages, and fixed compensations, and rent the social 
relations dependent upon them; when defalcations 


134 


IIFFLFC11ONS Fit OM 


ensued, and the whole government was buried in 

' Cj 

demoralization. 

It depreciated the means for religious, moral, and 
intellectual improvement. Those means that had 
provided conveniences and comforts ceased to buy 
necessaries; and those that had purchased necessaries 
would no longer provide against destitution and suf¬ 
fering; and the subject conditions were stinted, and 
worked with cruel energy. 

Prior to the year 1837, the bank circulation of 
Mississippi had been enormously inflated; the prices 
of land and other products rose; those who purchased 
at high prices, recommended further inflation for still 
higher prices, and all home production was sacrificed 
except that of cotton, which soon became insufficient 
to provide almost every thing else that was consumed. 
To meet the balance of trade, the coin was demanded, 
when the banks failed, and their circulation became 
irredeemable. The people were dependent for neces¬ 
saries, on products from abroad. The prices of lands 
dropped to a merely nominal sum, and the securities 
on them became worthless, and carried down all 
confidence in the resources of the banks. The whole 
State was convulsed, and anarchy and demoralization 
culminated in State repudiation and dishonor. Num¬ 
bers of the citizens ran off to Texas and Arkansas, 
where they, as well as those who remained, resisted, 
afterward, all attempts to establish a bank currency. 

Had the circulation been increased to the same 
extent by adulterating the coin, it would have retained 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


some value within itself; whereas the paper being 
merely representative, when the coin left, was wholly 
worthless; nor could any certain proportion between 
the paper and the coin have been preserved, unless 
the former had been restricted to the precise amount of 
the latter reserved. The inflated price of everything, 
besides cotton, in the State just mentioned, contracted 
all feelings of regard for religious, moral, and social 
sentiments. 

Indulgence, kindness, and humanity, cost more 
than even the slave was worth. Nor in other States, 
and in other conditions of labor, was there exemption 
from the equally cruel effects of the inflation of paper 
circulation. 

The amount of bankruptcy was estimated by Mr. 
Clay at $400,000,000. 

The negroes, a few years ago, when the inflation 
was great, would tell you that, though free, they were 
notable to provide for their sick, nor for their old 
and young; and the effect was clearly seen; indeed, 
many expressed their condition as being worse than 
that of slavery. 

Voltaire says that Charles the XII, of Sweden, 
after his return from Turkey, formed vast designs that 
required large amounts of money. His treasury had 
been exhausted and his people impoverished by his 
numerous wars. His Chancellor, the Baron of Gortz, 
adulterated the coin; prices correspondingly rose, and 
the taxes had also to be raised. After the fall of 
Charles at Fredrickshald, his chancellor suffered death 


136 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


on the public square of Stockholm, to appease the 
wrath of the people whose foreign trade he had ruined 
by his adulteration of the coin. Voltaire continues: 
“The adulteration of the coin, like an excess of ‘ bil¬ 
lets de change,’ produces a derangement of commerce 
that the people of no monarchy in Europe would 
bear, though republics have sometimes used the latter 
to supply the exigencies of war.” 

Law’s bank multiplied the currency enormously. 
“ Its shares rose from 500 francs to 10,000; the amount 
of paper reached 3,070,000,000, 883 millions more 
than had been legally authorized to be emitted. The 
paper became worthless, and the collapse was terrific. 
Law’s bank ran its course in four years.” Perry’s 
P. E. 274. 

The assignats had a course of about six years. 
“ The distress and consternation into which the country 
falls,” says Mr. Perry, “ when its measure of value is 
disturbed, as it was by the issue of the assignats, is 
past all power of description.” “There can be no 
doubt,” says he, “ that these assignats, caused more 
suffering in the French revolution—a hundred-fold 
more—than the prisons and the guillotine;” and 
compared with the cheerful industries and prosperity, 
stimulated by contractions of the currency by Prus¬ 
sian payments, they manifest, in the most lively 
manner, their contrasting effects of misery and hap¬ 
piness. 

By the constitution of 1844, given to the Bank of 
England by Sir Robert Peel, the supply of paper by 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


137 


the issue department of the bank, beyond the amount 
of the precious metals reserved, is, to some extent, 
set off* by the demands of the banking department of 
the bank, as the financial agent of the government 
in collecting the public money, etc. 

The pretence of a circulation based on means con¬ 
sisting of public and private debts, by the Bank of 
England, and those of our country, is fallacious, as 
experience has shown in both cases; and the same 
may be said of a circulation based on land or other 
property. 

A currency might be based on the receipts of the 
treasury without affecting the general circulation, 
because the demand and supply would be equal, and 
the latter would be redeemed everywhere by the 
former. 

During the late civil war, the United States govern¬ 
ment multiplied its currency, say four-fold, but, at 
the same time, increased the taxes largely, which 
increased the demand, and furnished the means of 
redemption in part; and the value was not depressed 
in the proportion of the increase. The appropriation 
of 1,000 millions, toward the close of the war, was 
reduced to about 400 millions of the former value of 
the currency; and 600 millions of debt was produced 
without any value to the country, but by the difference 
in the value of money caused by the increase of the 
circulation by paper. 

The Confederate States issued, say 25 to 1 of the 
former circulation of these States, but they made no 


138 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


demands by taxes or other means of redemption 
except by the conversion, at a late day, of a small 
portion of the circulation into bonds. The conse¬ 
quence was that the value was depressed in the same 
proportion with the increase of circulation. The 
soldier, who was promised §25.00 per month, got one 
dollar in value. 

By multiplying paper money for the purposes of 
war, the soldier must chiefly lose; when for the 
exigencies of trade, the laborer must chiefly lose; and 
in both cases, the end is a large debt, oppressive 
to all. 

The Governor of Tennessee reported to the legis¬ 
lature of 1857-8, at its call, that the bank circulation 
of the State was 9 millions at the beginning, and 3 
millions at the end of the former year. A run having 
been made on them, the banks had been forced to 
suspend. The usual relief by stay laws, or by inter¬ 
fering with the process of the courts, was regarded by 
the legislature as dishonest. The demands by the 
State for taxes were sufficient to redeem the circulation 
of the State bank in less than two years, and by pro¬ 
viding for their collection in State bank notes, the 
profits of an investment in these notes would prevent 
their depression below 10 per cent, without a dollar 
in the vaults of the banks. The legislature therefore 
provided that the notes of the bank should be received 
in payment of public taxes; and the fact being known 
that there was an amount of coin in bank sufficient to 
redeem a large portion of its circulation, no sensible 


MY NOTE BOOK. 


139 


depreciation was felt; the suspension was continued, 
the circulation was restored to its usual relations, and 
the means of exchange supplied. But if no increase 
of the circulation were permitted by the government 
in any way besides the legitimate demands of its 
civilization, and the paper should represent an equal 
amount of coin reserved, the natural organs of the 
government would be restored to their natural and 
constitutional functions, and their demands would 
intensify values to the material, moral and intellectual 
benefit of every one, as a just compensation for the 
burdens of taxation. 

Since the system of paper circulation has been in 
operation in our country, can it be said that there has 
ever been a just judgment or decree by the courts; or 
has it been possible for the courts to render one on 
contracts payable in money; or has there ever been, 
or can there be, a contract to be discharged at a future 
time, in money, of which it can truly be said that it 
has not been impaired by the fraudulent exercise of 
the power to contract and expand the circulation ? 

By the exercise of this power, the government, and 
even individuals, may annihilate the rights of the 
States, and derange all their relations of labor and 
production. 

But there is a higher objection : there can be no 
conventional or representative power to violate the 
laws of God, or commit a crime. “A false balance is 
an abomination to the Lord ; but a just weight is His 
delight.” Deut. 25: 1G-17. Prov. 11: 1. 


140 


REF LEV TIONS EE OM 


The power to issue, as circulation, false evidences 
of money—whether by the United States or banks—is 
a power to pervert all justice and benevolence, which 
no constitution can confer, nor court legalize or enforce, 
and which no free and sensible people will tolerate. 
Abuse in its exercise perverts all the protective rela¬ 
tions, all the moral adjustments, and all the harmonies 
of society into oppression, confusion and discord. It 
deadens the activities of all moral, physical and intel¬ 
lectual labor, and every generous feeling of our 
nature. That an intelligent, free and virtuous people 
should have borne so long the oppressions of its 
remorseless tyranny, is to me absolutely marvelous 
and amazing. Yet the courts have legalized these 
frauds, and they have become diffused through all the 
transactions of social life; and, at periods of eight or 
ten years, necessary causes operate to produce their 
natural effects of general bankruptcy and distress. Says 
the Christian canon : a Oyou who, govern ! you are an 
abomination to the Lord; for you have two weights 
and two measures; “ pondiis ct pondus, mensura et 
mensura , idrumque cst abomincibile apud JDeum” 

But we are told that, during the inflation of the 
currency, all products go up equally, so nothing is 
lost. They do not all go up equally; products sold 
abroad do not go up at all—as cotton, tobacco, etc.; 
nor do salaries, wages, fixed compensations and con¬ 
tracts, nor shipping, nor manufactures sold abroad. 

Again that good convertible paper sustains no 
depreciation. Any paper that represents more coin 


MY NOTE HOOK. 


141 


than is reserved is a fraud and falsehood, and lessens 
the representative value of both coin and paper, and 
operates as a fraud in exchange, and as a tax on home 
products in foreign markets, in favor of foreign pro¬ 
ducts. It displaces the coin, and, in the end, becomes 
worthless. 

Again, that we are greatly in debt, and need cheap 
money to pay it. By low cost at home and high 
prices abroad, we proportionally make more to pay 
our debts, and have more to spare for our improve¬ 
ment. Expansion is the process to make and increase 
debts; a natural uniformity is the basis of all just 
means to pay them, the world over. Before the 
existence of these false evidences of money, there were 
no national debts. Banks and paper money are the 
hateful parents of this monstrous progeny. 

Again, we are told that a specie circulation makes 
the rich richer and the poor poorer. A banker having 
one million of dollars in specie, by legislative charter, 
legalized by the courts, issues for it three millions in 
paper, and realizes three times the profit he is entitled 
to, and a loss proportionate is sustained in the deprecia¬ 
tion of the money realized by the laborer. By issuing 
bank paper, the rich multiply their money, and depre¬ 
ciate that of the poor. Besides, they can contract the 
circulation, lower prices, and buy, then expand the 
circulation, raise prices, and sell; and having gorged 
themselves by the abuse of powers that are inconsistent 
with all social justice, they claim the immunities and 
exemptions of benefactors, from the social ruin they 
have inflicted. 


142 


REFLECTIONS FROM 


We are further told, that a small circulation is not 
sufficient to move the crops. The assertion is stupid, 
if honest, because the moving of the crops belongs to 
the industries of exchange, and determines the just 
amount of circulation as every other industry or 
exchange determines it. The buyers from abroad 
furnish the money. The banks, I suppose, never give 
a cent for that purpose; they furnish conveniences for 
deposit, for safety, and for payment; as by bills of 
exchange, checks, drafts, and other economical means 
of money of account, for all which they are well paid, 
and to which their powers and operations should be 
restricted. By what reason do they demand other 
conditions that rob and oppress the people? 

Nor should the evidences of capital and products be 
converted into a circulating medium; for such evi¬ 
dence, besides the evil of inflation, is single and cannot 
effect an exchange. Money represents the relative 
value of all things by which an exchange is made. A 
bill for one hundred bales of cotton would not express 
the amount or value of sugar, coffee, land or other 
property to be exchanged, and, therefore, no exchange 
could be conveniently represented by it. The exchange 
of products, however, is vastly assisted by bills of 
exchange, by set-offs, and other economical means of 
money of account expressed in the precious metals. 
The transfer, or exchange of $1,000,000 of teas for 
$1,000,000 of cotton might be effected without the 
use of one dollar, yet the value of both the tea and 
the cotton, according to the quantity of money in the 
market, was the means of their exchange. 




“The perfection of human felicity and the fulfil¬ 
ment of human destiny/’ arise out of the religious, 
natural and reasonable adjustment of all societies and 
individuals in one state of co-adjutation. The indi¬ 
vidual is the first and simplest element: if he is not 
well constituted, ill understood, and ill appreciated, 
there will be an obstacle to the progress of real civil¬ 
ization,” Balmes. So of the family, and of the more 
enlarged social forms: all must revolve harmoniously 
around some central point of unity that shall reflect 
the universe, as it is in the mind of its maker, on the 
heart and destiny of each : All, then, in their different 
varieties, and according to their different merits, will 
occupy positions for their greatest development and 
happiness, and, as stewards, for the highest develop¬ 
ment and happiness of others, 1st Cor. x, 24. “All 
being members of one body ; and everyone members, 
one of another,” Rom. xii, 4, 5. “And every one, as 
in the natural body, have a necessary sympathy with 
every other, and all together form, by their harmonious 
conspirations, a healthy whole” Sir William Hamilton. 

Man does not create matter, but he does create 
utilities, which, transmitted according to the elective 
demands of the stupendous interior judgment of his 
unity, multiply and perfect existences. The circulation 



144 


REFLECTIONS FROM MY NOTE ROOK. 


of this vast system of social harmony is regulated for just 
distribution among all its members, and, from its ocean 
current of dissolving nature, nations, societies, and peo¬ 
ple, rises, renewed from its perfecting harmonies, the 
spiritual man with infinite variety of free will; “each 
one as well as all, growing up into the body and stature 
of Christ, which is continually unfolding and develop¬ 
ing itself, growing upwards in its perfection, until it 
reaches the stature and completeness which, in the 
predestination of God, is ordained.” 


THE END. 
















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